No agreement in Goa
Russia annoys G20 negotiators
By Jan Ganger, Goa
7/22/2023 12:53 p.m
Before the meeting of the G20 energy ministers in India, Russia is relying on a destructive negotiating tactic to slow down the faster expansion of green electricity. This is one of the reasons why there is no consensus.
The G20 countries have not been able to agree on accelerating the expansion of renewable energies. There was no joint, binding final declaration. Russia’s blockade tactics made a significant contribution to this. At the end of the meeting of the energy ministers of the most important industrial and emerging countries in Goa, Economics and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck accused Russia of a complete “misjudgment of reality”. Russia’s deputy energy minister blamed the war in Ukraine on the 2008 financial crisis, he said. That was described as “alternative facts” in a friendly way.
According to Habeck, interlocutors were deeply frustrated with the Russian behavior. The country did not make friends with it. This was preceded by tough negotiations on the final text.
Even before the start, it was clear that there would be no joint unanimous declaration, since Russia and Saudi Arabia, for example, as exporters of fossil energy, are blocking more ambitious goals on the way to expanding renewable energies. For example, they rejected the proposal to triple the share of renewable energy in the G20 countries by 2030. The global capacity of renewable energies is currently 3.3 terawatts, with the G20 countries accounting for the lion’s share.
Representatives of the member countries negotiated until the early hours of the morning for two days. The talks were even more difficult than in previous years. In addition, the Russian side used preventative tactics. According to information from ntv, this consisted, among other things, of giving long speeches without advancing the content of the negotiations. This lost time for substantive discussions. The Russian side also achieved this with a bizarre proposal: the protection of dams as a critical infrastructure for the energy supply should be included in the final document – an unmistakable provocation after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the occupation of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in the course of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.