How I tried – and failed – to get the Y20 to endorse fossil fuel phase-out

By Adam Gottschalk, Y20 2026

I set myself one goal as Australia’s Y20 energy delegate this year: to ensure the final communiqué called on world leaders to phase out fossil fuel production. I failed, but in the process, I learned a lot about why global climate negotiations have been persistently unable to address the problem of expanding fossil fuel production.

To frame this article with the most important statistic in climate policy: in 2030, countries plan to produce 120% more fossil fuels than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5˚C – the level of warming beyond which climate impacts will get significantly worse. This ‘production gap’ is critical: we cannot tackle climate change while continuing to produce more and more of the things that cause warming. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and International Energy Agency (IEA) have both concluded that new fossil fuel projects are inconsistent with meeting global temperature targets. Despite this, and despite the cost-competitiveness of clean energy, climate negotiations have consistently failed to agree on restricting coal, gas or oil production. The Paris Agreement – the world’s central climate treaty – doesn’t even mention fossil fuels. It took almost three decades for a climate conference (or ‘COP’) to include a commitment to ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ in its final text. When this finally happened at Dubai’s COP28 in 2023, it was groundbreaking, and the fact it was groundbreaking speaks to the problems plaguing global climate politics. 

But Y20 delegates aren’t bound by official government positions, and can therefore sidestep some of these problems to endorse more ambitious policies – or so I thought. The Y20 is the G20’s youth arm, bringing together young people from G20 countries to negotiate an annual policy platform. Importantly, like many multilateral negotiations, the Y20 is consensus-based: there is no voting and the agreement of all parties is required to finalise the text. This year’s Y20 took place in Washington DC and was preceded by several months of online negotiating sessions. In the first of these late night sessions, I proposed the Y20 call on G20 leaders to:

• Establish a moratorium on new coal, oil and gas approvals.

• Establish fossil fuel production phase-out targets to complement and substantiate existing emissions reduction commitments.

This proposal was more ambitious than UN texts, but consistent with the IPCC and IEA as outlined above. A few weeks later, the draft text was modified to incorporate another delegate’s ideas, so it read: 

• Champion the establishment of a coalition of the willing, committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels through a shared carbon budget aligned with the Paris Agreement, covering all sectors of the economy. Within the Coalition, establish a moratorium on new coal, oil and gas approvals.

Although ‘championing the establishment of a coalition of the willing committed to…’ is weaker than simply ‘establishing a moratorium’, these changes were acceptable to me because they spoke to the importance of plurilateral coalitions united by strong commitments to phase out fossil fuels. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, for instance, is successfully creating new international forums, outside of the UNFCCC process, to advance fossil fuel phase-out.

The Y20 communiqué has no legal meaning. Its significance consists in convening youth voices and conveying their priorities to G20 leaders. Any political value it possesses depends on it being sufficiently bold and ambitious to generate attention, and I expected the other delegates to feel similarly. But some delegates began to raise objections to this proposed text, attempting to water down the language. With their modifications, the text rapidly began to lose clarity and boldness, and therefore to forfeit its already tenuous political value. After much discussion and mediation, the only language deemed acceptable by the objectors was conceptually flawed and riddled with caveats (phrases such as ‘in accordance with national circumstances’, which act as get-out-of-jail-free cards for countries). One part read (with emphasis added):

• Urge historically responsible States, voluntarily and in accordance with national circumstances, to establish a moratorium in accordance with national legal frameworks on coal approvals [note: not oil or gas]. 

I was surprised, more than anything else. I had expected all the other youth delegates to share a commitment to strong climate action, so it was fascinating to see fossil fuel phase-out become the major flashpoint of this youth forum. Without realising it, and despite being liberated from the straitjackets of official policy, the Y20 had come to mirror the debates that have plagued real climate negotiations for decades: do we need to phase out fossil fuels, how quickly, and who bears the responsibility?

This was disappointing, but also interesting for what it revealed about how multilateral negotiations can be derailed. It was almost too easy for a small group of dissatisfied delegates to completely unwind proposals that had sat largely untouched for months. All they had to do was say ‘no’. The main barrier to holding the entire process hostage was not whether it was technically possible, but whether it was socially possible. With our negotiations dragging on long past the official deadline, could the objecting delegates hold their ground, in the face of mounting pressure from the friends they had made over the preceding months? They could. The final fossil fuel section read:

• Transition away from fossil fuels: Recognize that transitioning away from fossil fuels will benefit G20 economies and will result in efficiency and security gains that current policy is failing to achieve at the required speed, in accordance with the principles of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities. Champion a just transition for workers and communities through income support and reskilling programs that will lead to equitable and inclusive outcomes for all partnered societies.

The text had been gutted of substance. All mention of restricting fossil fuel production, let alone a moratorium on new projects, had been removed. At the eleventh hour, the principal objecting delegate made it clear that we would either remove the offending language, or they would refuse to sign the communiqué. The rest of the delegates, myself included, preferred something over nothing, and capitulated; the objector, to their credit, had played their cards well, and won. And so it was that I failed to include a commitment to fossil fuel phase-out in the Y20 communiqué. But I had learned what it looks like to negotiate effectively – to dig in your heels and force others to converge around your position – and I had witnessed in miniature why multilateral progress on fossil fuel phase-out remains so elusive.

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The views and opinions expressed by Global Voices Fellows do not necessarily reflect those of the organisation or its staff.