Roundup: G7 ministers end energy summit without agreement on climate

Energy ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries finished their energy-related talks in the Italian capital without reaching consensus on a joint statement on climate change, due mostly to reservation from the United States.

G7 energy ministers on Monday did reach agreement in a few other areas, including the need to protect the world's energy supply from possible cyber attacks, to seek ways to open up international gas markets, and recognizing the value of developing renewable energy sources.

But an agreement on joint language on climate change eluded the ministers, after the U.S. delegation, led by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, "reserved its opinion" on a proposed text.

According to Carlo Calenda, Italy's minister for economic development and the host of the two-day G7 energy summit in Rome, U.S. delegates said the newly installed administration of President Donald J. Trump did not yet have a formal position on the international climate change process.

"The U.S. government is in the process of reviewing many of its policies, including policies related to climate change and to the Paris Agreement," Calenda said, referring to the 2015 deal in which nearly 200 countries agreed to take steps to limit climate change.

The G7 groups major industrialized economies Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the United States. Italy holds this year's G7 presidency.

Analysts said the developments in Rome were a sign that climate change was set to be a hot topic in international diplomacy this year, given the mixed signals from the United States. Before the election, Trump said climate change was a "hoax," and last month he took steps to dismantle domestic rules put in place to confront climate change.

But Trump delayed a decision over whether or not the United States would pull out of the Paris Agreement, and in Rome, the fact that the United States "reserved its opinion" on the climate language meant the topic can still be revisited.

"It seems like climate change will be a central topic at multilateral negotiations all year," Raul Messi, an energy policy expert with ABS Securities, told Xinhua.

Next month will be the next big test, when the United Nations hosts its first set of negotiations of 2017 in Bonn, and world leaders meet in Sicily for the G7 heads of state summit, which is likely to be Trump's first foreign trip as president.

Italy holds the rotating leadership of the group, which means that all the G7 meetings this year will be held on Italian territory.

Calenda, the energy summit chair, said he was supportive of the U.S. stance in Rome, saying that member states "respect the fact that the United States is re-analyzing its positions."

But other European figures took a harder stance. "While some review their climate and clean energy policies, most of us move forward and implement them in line with the Paris Agreement," Miguel Arias Canete, the European Union climate change commissioner said via social media.

Environmental groups were also critical of the U.S. position. "Now we see that the United States will play an opposition role to those trying to save our planet," Greenpeace climate campaigner Aldo Moressi said in an interview outside the G7 venue. Endit