Climate meeting in London: no agreement on energy without coal.

Countries deadlocked over need to phase out coal-fired power generation after key climate meeting. Amid flash floods, ministers from more than 50 countries gathered in London for face-to-face climate talks.

“Countries have completed essential climate negotiations and have found themselves in a stalemate over the thorny issue of phasing out coal-fired power generation,” said UK Minister Alok Sharma. Amid extreme flooding, ministers from more than 50 countries gathered in London this week to discuss tougher measures to tackle the climate crisis ahead of Cop 26 - a much-anticipated global summit to be held in Glasgow in just under 100 days.

Sharma, who is the president-designate of Cop 26, said "progress has been made" during the two-day summit, but warned "vital issues" remain unresolved. "We discussed the crucial issues that will be on the agenda at Cop 26." As we were in sessions, heavy rains and flash floods swept through London - a sobering reminder of the urgency of our task, ” he told reporters during a press briefing on Monday evening. “We have come closer, but on these vital issues we are not yet close enough. There is still a lot of work to be done before COP 26. ”

The next meeting to be held in Glagow next November is widely seen as a vital last chance to put the world on track to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels - in line with the objectives expressed by the signatory countries within the framework of the Paris Agreement.

The London meeting comes days after environment ministers from G20 countries failed to agree on key climate commitments in talks held in Italy. The Naples meeting continued through Thursday night as a small number of countries, including Russia, China and India, opposed efforts to agree on tougher climate measures, such as that the phasing out of coal-fired power and the removal of fossil fuel subsidies. Mr Sharma called "very disappointing" the lack of agreement on the phase-out of coal-fired energy - a measure considered essential to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 ° C. "We haven't been able to get all the G20 countries to agree to language on phasing out coal, it's that simple, " he said at the press briefing. He added that it was "the duty of each country to give everything to bring this process to a successful conclusion" "At the COP 26, there will be nowhere to hide", he declared, before add: “Each of us will be in the spotlight. "

Patricia Espinosa, climate officer at the UN, added that the face-to-face meeting of ministers had been "extremely productive" but that "challenges" remained to be met. “We have a lot of work to do in the next 90 days,” she told reporters. This was the first such face-to-face meeting in over 18 months. The government said the Cop 26 team had worked closely with Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace to ensure "appropriate protocols" were followed, including "daily testing and distancing measures social ”.

Cop 26 was originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic. The world has high hopes for this reunion. Between the successive alarming reports of the IPCC and the repeated extreme climate phenomena across the planet, the decisions taken will have no other choice but to be up to the task.

We are just worried that at only 4 months from the deadline, discussions on such crucial subjects remain at an impasse!