Nearly 60 nations met in the Colombian coastal city of Santa Marta last month for the first ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, a gathering that its organisers hope will mark the beginning of a new era in climate diplomacy and a decisive break from the economic and geopolitical grip of oil, coal and gas.
The conference, co‑hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands from 24 to 29 April, deliberately broke with the format of traditional United Nations climate summits. There were no vetoes, no hours of fractious negotiation over minutiae, and no room for petrostate obstruction. Instead, the week began with a “science pre‑conference” involving around 400 academics, followed by a people’s summit and gatherings of parliamentarians. All three groups then sent representatives into the high‑level ministerial sessions, which focused on practical steps rather than binding pledges. The aim, according to Colombia’s environment minister and chair of the talks, Irene Vélez Torres, was to create a “new method” of accelerating decarbonisation by bringing together high‑ambition governments, civil society and legislators – a forum she described as “the beginning of a new global climate democracy”.
The 59 participating countries represent roughly a third of the global economy. They signed on to the spirit of the Belém Declaration on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, a document already backed by 24 nations, and agreed to begin drawing up national roadmaps for phasing out coal, oil and gas. Those roadmaps are expected to feed into the broader UN climate negotiating process and, organisers hope, encourage other countries to join what is being called a “coalition of the willing”. A new scientific panel on the energy transition, based at the University of São Paulo and comprising 50 to 100 scientists, was also launched to provide rapid, bespoke analysis for countries making the switch.
An economic and security crisis like no other
The urgency driving the Santa Marta conference is rooted in a series of overlapping global shocks that have exposed the vulnerability of economies still dependent on fossil fuels. Oil and gas prices soared after the US‑Israeli military operation against Iran, which began on 28 February, effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz – a chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supply flows. Brent crude rose above $126 a barrel at one point. The disruption comes on top of the price volatility and supply‑chain chaos that followed Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, marking the second major energy crisis in half a decade.
The International Energy Agency has called this “the mother of all energy crises”. Its executive director, Fatih Birol, the world’s leading energy economist, said the current shock is “bigger than all the biggest crises combined”. He added that he still cannot understand how the global economy allowed itself to be “held hostage to a 50km strait”. The result has been a three‑pronged economic blow: rising energy costs, soaring food prices as farmers cannot afford fertiliser, and rampant inflation that pushes up interest rates and the cost of servicing debt. Poorer nations, already carrying higher debt burdens and lower reserves, are suffering most, but no country has been immune.
What makes this crisis different from the oil shocks of the 1970s, Birol argued, is that a viable alternative now exists. Cheap, reliable and plentiful renewable energy from wind and sun, backed by modern battery technology, can smooth intermittency. Electric vehicles and heat pumps offer a way to shift transport and heating off fossil fuels and onto a far more efficient electricity grid. Renewables overtook coal in global electricity generation last year for the first time, according to the energy thinktank Ember, supplying 33.8% of power compared with coal’s 33%. Interest from consumers in solar panels and batteries, from Pakistan to the UK, has leapt further since the Iran war.
Birol predicted that the current shock would produce a permanent shift in the global energy industry. “Their perception of risk and reliability will change,” he said. “Governments will review their energy strategies. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future. And this will cut into the main markets for oil.” He likened the damage to a broken vase: “It will be very difficult to put the pieces back together. This will have permanent consequences for the global energy market for years to come.”
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said the fossil fuel industry’s long dominance of global economies had finally woken governments to the dangers. “The fossil fuel cost crisis now has its foot on the throat of the global economy,” he said. “Those who have fought to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels are inadvertently supercharging the global renewables boom.” Military advisers have also weighed in, Stiell noted, pointing out that renewables offer a better route to national security than dependence on volatile imports. “Governments are pushing renewables plans into overdrive: to restore national security, economic stability, competitiveness, policy autonomy and basic sovereignty.”
The economic logic is impossible to ignore, Stiell argued, and is turning the old geopolitical order on its head. The Santa Marta conference has been described by some participants as marking a new global divide between “electro‑democracies” – nations powered by clean electricity – and “petro‑dictatorships” that rely on fossil fuel exports to maintain political control. But the old powers are far from finished. The United States, the world’s biggest gas producer, is increasingly flexing its military muscle to enforce the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance”. Russia, the second biggest gas supplier, is waging war against Ukraine. And fossil fuel interests are pouring huge sums into the political campaigns of far‑right candidates in the Americas and Europe, seeking to slow the transition.
Challenges on the road to implementation
Despite the momentum in Santa Marta, the path ahead is obstructed by serious obstacles. The upfront cost of shifting to renewable energy remains a barrier, particularly for fossil‑fuel‑producing nations that need finance to invest in new industries to replace lost export revenue. The conference did not aim to raise new money – rich countries had already offered a settlement of $300bn a year by 2035 at the COP29 summit in Baku in November 2024, and that figure is unlikely to improve now that the United States has withdrawn its dollars from key climate finance programmes, including the Just Energy Transition Partnership and a board overseeing a “loss and damage” fund.
Other sources of cash are available. The world currently spends about $1.5tn a year on direct fossil‑fuel subsidies, according to research cited at the talks, and the International Monetary Fund has estimated that total subsidies – including implicit undercharging for environmental damage – reached $7tn in 2022. Redirecting even a fraction of that sum would accelerate the transition. Another option is to raise money from the companies that have profited from the climate crisis through windfall taxes and similar mechanisms. David Hillman, director of the Make Polluters Pay coalition, said: “Fossil fuel giants are figuratively making a killing from this war. Their excessive unearned profits need to fund the transition to renewables to hasten the end of our fossil fuel dependence.”
Political vulnerability is another acute concern. Almost all of the 59 nations that attended Santa Marta are democracies, which is both a strength and a weakness. Colombia itself faces a presidential election at the end of May, in which the ruling party’s candidate, Iván Cepeda, is being challenged by the far‑right populist Abelardo de la Espriella, who wants to increase fracking and oil production. If the latter wins, the global energy transition movement would lose one of its most important national champions. Nor is Colombia alone in its contradictions. The Netherlands, co‑host of the conference, announced new drilling in the North Sea just before the event. The UK is mulling new North Sea fields. Other countries present in Santa Marta – from Brazil to Tanzania – also have fossil‑fuel expansion plans. Those decisions will have to be reversed if the conference is to live up to its billing as a “conference of doers”.
The absence of national oil companies from the Santa Marta talks is a further weakness. Claudio Angelo, of the Observatorio do Clima in Brazil, said: “I don’t think the Santa Marta process represents any immediate threat to the fossil fuel industry. This is more about countries organising to draw up a plan. Even within the ‘doers’, the fossil industry landscape is diverse: national oil companies in Latin America, private oil majors in Europe and parts of Africa. These folks will fight for lenient transition calendars until they’re either outcompeted by Chinese electricity or forced by governments to diversify.”
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, framed the challenge in terms of three intertwined transitions: “Out of fossil fuels, into renewable energy for all, and into a world that cares for nature. All must be grounded in justice.” The roadmaps that countries are now supposed to develop are intended to attract investors and provide guidance for a fair transition that protects workers and the most vulnerable. Before the next conference, which is scheduled to take place early next year on the Pacific island of Tuvalu – co‑hosted with Ireland – nations are expected to submit their initial plans. There is also a growing call for a Fossil Fuel Non‑Proliferation Treaty, and the International Court of Justice has confirmed that states have a legal obligation to manage their fossil‑fuel production.
Santa Marta, a historically coal‑fuelled town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, may eventually be remembered as the place where the seeds of a new approach were planted. Fernanda Carvalho, head of policy for climate and energy at WWF International, said: “In times of an exhaustion of multilateral processes and a gap in delivering the system change we need, what is emerging offers a different approach. This could be a real bottom‑up process that centres the voices of communities most affected by fossil fuel extraction and consumption.” For now, however, the national oil companies that will be central to drawing up those roadmaps were not in the room, and some of the participating governments are still planning new drilling projects of their own.
