At last week’s G7 summit, Boris Johnson pushed his fellow leaders to back his climate finance plan to support large-scale renewable energy projects across Africa and parts of Asia. The PM received a decidedly lukewarm response to his new Marshall plan, only netting pledges from Canada and Germany – and for good reason. As Rishi Sunak highlighted this week, when he declined to put a ‘specific figure’ on the cost of Net Zero in an interview on GB News, the cost of these climate plans are anything but clear.
Fundamentally, Boris’s plan to boost renewables around the world misses the fact that renewables are actually struggling to catch up with traditional energy sources. This isn’t likely to change any time soon: thanks to renewable energy’s reliability issues, the need for solid energy infrastructure in developing countries, and soaring demand for petrochemicals, the fundamentals of the fossil fuel industry remain strong.
It’s not surprising that most G7 states have shied away from making significant new pledges towards climate finance.
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