The 2023 G7 Leaders Summit is an opportunity to mobilize international pressure on the Japanese government to stop financing fossil fuels and promoting false solutions. After resisting commitments to phase out fossil fuels at COP26 (the only G7 country to do so), Japan finally committed to phasing out unabated fossil fuel projects at last year’s G7 meeting.

However, Japan recently launched an intense strategy to advance its “green transformation” and Asia energy transition initiatives. Japan is promoting fossil gas as a transition fuel and is driving the expansion of fossil fuel-based technologies such as ammonia-coal co-firing, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage (CCS). This strategy would block the renewable energy transition, undermine energy security, and worsen the climate crisis.

Hosting the G7 summit is a moment of national pride for Japan – it’s our chance to challenge them. Japan is the world’s top financier of fossil fuels and is promoting false solutions prolonging the use of fossil fuels when we should be phasing them out immediately.

In 2022, the G7 agreed to decarbonize by 2035, with coal phase-out by 2030 and fossil-fuel vehicles phase-out by 2035. But Japan won’t give up fossil fuels and is determined to export outdated fossil fuel technologies and rebrand them to “less developed” Asian countries in the name of development.

This is a betrayal to Japan’s role as G7 lead and to its fellow Asian countries and communities that have already lost lives and livelihoods to forced evictions, pollution, and climate-induced disasters. All of Asia deserves to breathe clean air, to be safe from heatwaves, floods and rising sea levels, and to live free from the fear of eviction brought by Japanese-funded fossil fuel projects.

The G7 cannot afford to backslide on its commitments in 2022, and Japan’s attempt to block a clear timeline for coal phase-out and push false solutions risk running the people and the planet over the cliff of climate catastrophe.

As this year’s summit president, Japan can demonstrate its leadership in raising ambition among the G7 and Asian countries. This means a full stop to Japanese financing of fossil fuels in Asia and everywhere.