EPA G7 to limit global warming to below 2 degrees German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a significant victory in persuading the rest of the G7 to adopt ambitious emissions targets ahead of December’s Paris climate summit.

ELMAU, Germany — The G7 agreed Monday afternoon to limit the increase in global temperatures to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wanted the group of wealthy countries to present a united front ahead of a climate summit in Paris this December.

“Urgent and concrete action is needed to address climate change,” said a statement issued by the group, ending a summit held in the Bavarian Alps. The plan calls for meeting a United Nations recommendation for reducing emissions in 2050 from 40 to 70 percent below 2010 levels. That may be enough to prevent global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.

Merkel's hope is that the example set by the G7 — making up most of the world's leading industrial economies — will send a message to other polluters.

“Even if G7 countries had zero emissions tomorrow we still couldn’t solve the climate problem. Other countries need to play a role,” she said, pointing out that China's recent progress in switching to renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro electric show a commitment to tackling global warming. “I do believe that Germany has possibilities to help.”

The G7 also reiterated an earlier commitment from developed countries to raise and spend $100 billion a year from private and public sources on climate mitigation by 2020.

“We emphasize that deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century,” said the statement.

Merkel, who has become so wedded to the global warming agenda that she has been dubbed the “climate chancellor,” had staked her prestige on getting her fellow G7 leaders to follow Germany's lead. She backed her call by strengthening her country’s transition to renewable energy sources like solar and wind. The German government has to phase out nuclear power by 2022; as of last year almost a third of its power was generated by renewables, outpacing coal.

“Climate change has become more and more of a priority for the chancellor — much of her public commentary in recent days has been about the issue,” said Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate change program at the World Resources Institute.

After the summit, Merkel said that one of the ways of getting to the new low emission target will be to use market friendly policies like carbon emissions trading. The EU's own emission tradition scheme has been in place for a decade, but has been a bit of a flop, as carbon prices set by the scheme have been too low to drive industries to decarbonize. Brussels recently revamped the program in an effort to mop up excess emissions allowances and send prices higher.

“In Europe what we have in mind for the world is emissions trading,” Merkel said. “Germany will have to make an effort here because in Europe we have a lot of coal-fired exports. And that’s where the emissions are. We hope to come to a uniform European energy market.”

Environmental groups reacted positively to the commitment.

“This was a really helpful G7,” said Liz Gallagher, leader of the climate diplomacy program at the energy and environmental group E3G. “It is very much talking about the fact that they’re going to decarbonize the global economy, and that’s quite useful to investors and businesses.”

Merkel applied diplomatic pressure to ensure that all the G7 countries fell into line. Working together with French President François Hollande and U.S. President Barack Obama, she managed to overcome Canadian and Japanese doubts.

Japan initially resisted Merkel’s push for bankrolling climate action, because it uses its climate finance to support exports of coal technology to developing countries, according to Gallagher. Japan has become much more reliant on coal, which has filled the country's energy gap after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Canada, which has huge investments in controversial and highly polluting tar sands development in Alberta, started the summit as a potential hold-out, but government and NGO sources told POLITICO that its position softened under pressure from Obama.

“My understanding is that Japan was indeed opposing many of the things that had been proposed in original draft of communiqué and Canada was number two in terms of opposition, both were opposed to the idea that the era of fossil fuels has to end this century,” said Lutz Weischer, the team leader for international climate policy at the NGO Germanwatch.