LONDON -- Japan, Australia and Saudi Arabia sought to revise a key climate change report over wariness of swiftly moving away from fossil fuels, documents leaked to British media show.
The still-uncompleted report -- part of which was published in August by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- is said to have called for cutting fossil fuel use to keep global warming to between 1.5 C and 2 C compared with preindustrial levels.
Documents leaked to the BBC included tens of thousands of requests submitted by "governments, companies and other interested parties" to the team of scientists preparing the IPCC report. In addition to Japan, coal-dependent Australia and major oil producer Saudi Arabia were among the countries revealed to have lobbied for changes.
OPEC pressed to weaken language on reducing fossil fuel usage, according to The Guardian. The newspaper and the BBC both framed the lobbying as an effort to water down the work of the U.N.'s 26th Conference of the Parties climate change conference, or COP26, which starts in Glasgow at the end of the month.
The IPCC report is drawn up every six to seven years and serves as a base in international negotiations on climate change, such as COP26. The part disclosed in August estimated that if the world continues to rely on fossil fuels, global temperatures will rise faster and will increase by 4.4 C between 2081 and 2100 in the worst-case scenario.
Saudi Arabia sought to delete a conclusion on the need to phase out fossil fuels, as well as phrases like "the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales," the BBC reported.
A senior scientist from a research institute with strong links to the Indian government warned that coal will likely remain the mainstay of energy production for decades, according to the broadcaster.
Neither the BBC nor The Guardian provided details on what Japan had requested. The U.K. and European nations increasingly seek to phase out coal power generation. But Japan -- aiming to ensure a stable supply of electricity -- has merely promised to end government support for overseas coal power projects. Japan is finding it more difficult to parry criticism of its coal use through such means as adopting technologies to boost efficiency.