Kishida pledges at climate summit to phase out coal-fired power

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged Friday to take necessary measures to reduce Japan's reliance on coal-fired power generation, aiming to achieve its commitment to realizing carbon neutrality by 2050.

In a speech at a U.N. meeting on climate change in the United Arab Emirates, Kishida added Japan plans to enhance financial support for international lenders to aid developing nations in securing funds to tackle environmental issues.

Kishida, who promised to work with other countries to "triple" the global volume of green power, is in Dubai to attend a summit-level gathering of the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28.

Resource-poor Japan has been highly dependent on imports of fossil fuels such as coal and crude oil.

Kishida said Japan will terminate the construction of new coal-fired power plants that have no emission-reducing measures in place, without specifying the timeline or mentioning the scrapping of existing plants.

Kishida also encouraged COP28 participants to make more efforts to accomplish the targets outlined in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to "well below" 2 C, preferably to 1.5 C, compared with levels before the Industrial Revolution.

To prevent the 1.5 C line from being crossed, U.N. scientists estimate that CO2 emissions will need to be decreased by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030.

Kishida, meanwhile, said Japan will help establish a new fund within the African Development Bank, and is ready to expand loan capacities for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank by around $9 billion.

He added Japan will host the first summit meeting on reducing carbon emissions with Association of Southeast Asian Nations members later this month, as the country has introduced the "Asia Zero Emission Community" framework.

On Thursday, the opening day of the COP28 conference, Japan vowed to contribute $10 million to a new international fund to support developing nations incurring loss and damage caused by climate change.