Germany’s G20 presidency dramatically weakened a climate action plan, gutting it of ambitious language and defining gas, and potentially even some coal power, as “clean technologies”, in an attempt to appeal to US president Donald Trump.

The action plan was intended to be agreed at next week’s Hamburg G20 summit. Climate Home has seen two versions, drafted in March and May of this year. The latter shows the degree to which the German presidency has bent to the will of the Trump White House.

Several elements that have been removed in the May draft are:

• A 2025 deadline for the end of fossil fuel subsidies
• References to the risk of “stranded assets”
• A call for “the alignment of public expenditure and infrastructure planning with the goals of the Paris Agreement”
• A push for carbon pricing
• A commitment to publish mid-century decarbonisation blueprints by next year
• A pledge to develop a “profound” climate plan for multilateral development banks
• Seven references to the UN’s 2018 review of nationally-determined contributions
• 11 references to the 2050 mid-century pathway for net zero emission
• 16 mentions of infrastructure decarbonisation

“The US massively weakened the language in the energy part of the action plan,” one source with knowledge of the negotiations said. “It pushed for references to so-called ‘clean’ fossil fuels and made it less explicit that the energy transition has to be built on energy efficiency and renewables.”

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