CLIMATE CHANGE GOVERNANCE
change created by the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. The second force, also very strong, is multilateral organizational failure, from the absence of a world energy organization, the competition among the partial, fragmented international organizations, and the failure of the UN’s climate summits to keep 1.5°C alive as post-industrial temperature rise target, and to revive 1.5°C at its most recent COP 29 meeting in November. The third force is the globally predominant and internally equalizing overall and energy capabilities of G7 and G20 members, who must take up the task in effective, combined ways that all members craft and fully support. Such internal equality is currently small, due to America’s strong dollar, oil and gas production and growth, but will grow by 2027. The fourth force, the common and converging democratic principles of the members, will be constrained by the actions of Trump, and the G20’s autocracies of China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, but should slowly grow after 2026. The fifth force, the domestic political control and support of G7 and G20 leaders, is similarly small for the clean, green energy pioneers of Germany, France, the UK and Canada and stronger for the fossil fuel devotes of Saudi Arabia, Russia and China. But the results of the US mid-term elections in late 2026 should force Trump to adjust in greener energy ways, backed by most of his G7 colleagues with a much stronger political position at home by then. The sixth force is the value the leaders place on the G7 and G20 as their personal clubs at the hub of an expanding network of global governance. This will be low for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for the next year or two, but should be stronger for Trump and other leaders after that. This will enable the G7 to lead and the G20 to support a just transition to the clean, green, healthy, safe, world energy future that all will know they need, before it is too late. The global community still lacks a comprehensive, competent world energy organization to respond to them — and the United Nations’ periodic energy-related summits have failed to meet the need “
polluters, suggests the G20’s promising potential for leading a clean energy future from the key developing countries of both the Global South and North. However, constraints will come from the 2025 G20’s host, South Africa, at 58% compliance, and from petro-power Saudi Arabia at 55%, Turkey 46%, coal-fueled Indonesia 60%, fossil fuel–rich Russia 62% and Argentina at 64%. Moreover, G20 compliance with its “dirty” energy commitments has averaged only 44%, and with its many commitments to phase out fossil fuels in the medium term only 56%. Still, G20 commitments on clean energy and renewables, technology transfer and innovation, energy efficiency, sustainability, a low- or no-emissions future, and SDG 7 average a high 86% compliance. The G20 will help generate a greater clean energy future, but only starting three years from now. As host of the G20’s Rio Summit in November 2024, Brazilian president Lula da Silva did little to govern energy, advance clean energy, or provide a boost for the UN’s climate summit that he will host in Belém in November 2025. The Rio Summit declaration made only one commitment on energy with a deadline, and it was five years away. It stated: “We support the implementation of efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements globally through existing targets and policies, similarly support the implementation with respect to other zero and low-emission technologies, including abatement and removal technologies in line with national circumstances by 2030.” The next G20 host, for its summit in late November 2025, is coal-dependent South Africa, whose president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has put economic development ahead of clean energy and climate change control as his summit priorities. Then due to host in 2026 is Donald Trump. Only by 2027 does greater promise arise, when the UK’s clean energy committed Keir Starmer is likely to host. If the G20 repeats the hosting order of its first cycle, then come similarly committed Canada, Korea and France. Propellors of Future G7 and G20 Energy Performance Past and future advances in the G7 and G20 summit’s energy governance are propelled by six key forces. The first are the shocks that activate the vulnerability of the members, including the oil embargo in 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the oil price spike in July 2008 to $147 a barrel, which helped ignite the American-turned-global financial crisis in August 2008, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As 2025 starts, such shocks will be very strong, primarily from the growing extreme weather events from the climate
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THE FUTURE OF ENERGY
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