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Could
Santa Marta climate talks mark ground zero in push to ditch fossil fuels?
Colombia
hosted nearly 60 countries at pivotal time on world stage for fight to
transition to a clean energy future
Fiona
Harvey and Jonathan Watts in Santa Marta
Fri 1 May
2026 15.19 BST
Looking
out to sea from the grey sandy beaches of Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean
coast, it is never hard to spot evidence of the country’s thriving fossil fuel
export trade. Oil tankers ride at anchor on the horizon and sometimes, locals
say, lumps of coal wash up on the shore, blown off the collier ships that carry
cargos from the nearby mines.
It was
here, on Wednesday evening, that the Colombian government took a bold step to
shift its economy – and that of the rest of the world – away from dependence on
coal, gas and oil and into a new era of clean energy. With the first ever
conference on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, the host joined nearly 60
countries determined to loosen of the grip of petrostates on the world’s
future.
“This is
the beginning of a new global climate democracy,” Irene Vélez Torres,
Colombia’s environment minister and chair of the talks, said in closing remarks
that celebrated a “new method” of bringing together high-ambition governments,
parliamentarians and civil society groups to accelerate the decarbonisation of
their economies.
At this
moment in history, the conference may also mark a new global divide between
“electro-democracies” and petro-dictatorships.
The
initiative has come at a pivotal moment in the climate fight. Oil and gas
prices have soared since the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, the second such crisis
within five years, after the price rises that followed Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. Households around the world are spiralling into debt, farmers cannot
afford fertiliser and governments are remembering that a dependency on volatile
fossil fuels is holding them hostage to geopolitical forces they cannot
control.
The
global economy faces a triple whammy: rising energy costs; rising food costs
that follow; and the spectre of rampant inflation that will raise interest
rates and add to the cost of servicing debt. Both rich and poor nations are
feeling the impact, but the poor with their higher levels of debt and lower
reserves are suffering more.
Repeated
oil shocks blighted the 1970s, and the current crisis is not only greater than
those but more impactful than all previous crises combined, according to Fatih
Birol, the world’s leading energy economist and chief of the International
Energy Agency, the gold standard in energy research. “This is bigger than all
the biggest crises combined, and therefore huge,” he said in an exclusive
Guardian interview. “I still cannot understand that the world was so
blindsided, that the global economy can be held hostage to a 50km strait.”
What is
different today from previous oil shocks is the ready availability of a viable
alternative: cheap, reliable and plentiful renewable energy from the wind and
sun, with modern battery technology to smooth over any intermittency; while
electric vehicles and heat pumps can shunt transport and heating off fossil
fuels and on to far more efficient electricity.
For those
reasons, Birol predicted the current shock would mark a permanent change for
the global energy industry, leading consumer countries to lose trust in fossil
fuels. “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.”
These
changes would be lasting, he added. “The vase is broken, the damage is done –
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.”
It is an
irony not lost on Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, that it is the oil
industry’s dominance of global economies that has 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.”
Philip
Nugent, director general for EU, international and marine affairs; Colombia’s
environmental minister, Irene Vélez Torres; Stientje van Veldhoven, minister of
climate policy and green growth of the Netherlands, and Maina Talia, minister
of home affairs, climate change and environment of Tuvalu, talk onstage at the
end of the conference in Santa Marta, Colombia. Photograph: Iván Valencia/AP
Renewables
overtook coal in global electricity generation last year for the first time,
according to the thinktank Ember, generating 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.
“The
economic logic of renewables [is] impossible to ignore,” Stiell said. Military
advisers have weighed in too, pointing out that renewables offer a better route
than fossil fuels to national security. Stiell noted: “Governments are pushing
renewables plans into overdrive: to restore national security, economic
stability, competitiveness, policy autonomy and basic sovereignty.”
But no
one should write off the petrostates just yet. The world’s biggest gas
producer, the United States, is increasingly flexing its military muscle to
assert the Trump administration’s goal of “energy dominance”. Russia, the
second biggest gas supplier, is waging war against its democratic neighbour
Ukraine. Fossil fuel interests are pouring huge sums into the political
campaigns of far-right candidates in the Americas and Europe.
The Santa
Marta vision of a “new global climate democracy” sets people power against
this. Polls constantly show an overwhelming majority of people want their
governments to take stronger action against the climate crisis, but at many
international meetings their voices are drowned out by corporate lobbyists or
shut down by petrostate vetoes.
At Santa
Marta, by contrast, science led the way on the opening day, followed by a
“people’s summit” and gatherings of parliamentarians. All of these groups sent
representatives to the high-level sessions in the final two days, where there
were no vetoes, no fractious negotiations over minutiae, only intensive and
constructive dialogue on how to move forward. Many participants called the
gathering historic but few were under any illusions that it was anything more
than a strong start.
Claudio
Angelo, of the Observatorio do Clima, a thinktank 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.”
Though
shifting to renewables will work out cheaper for all countries in the
long-term, there is an upfront cost to the switch. Fossil fuel producer nations
will also need finance to invest in new industries to replace lost oil, gas and
coal export revenue.
The Santa
Marta conference was not intended for new finance pledges – rich countries
offered a settlement of $300bn a year by 2035 at the Cop29 conference in 2029,
and that will not be improved on now the US has withdrawn its dollars.
But there
could be other routes to finding cash. Diverting some of the $1.5tn currently
spent each year on subsidising fossil fuels around the world would help, and
raising money from the companies that have profited from the climate crisis,
through windfall taxes and other mechanisms, is always an option. David
Hillman, the 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.”
Almost
all of the 59 nations participating at Santa Marta are democracies, which is
both a strength and a vulnerability. Colombia will hold a presidential election
at the end of May in which the ruling party’s candidate, Iván Cepeda, faces a
fierce challenge from 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 nations.
Colombia
is not the only country facing difficulties. The Netherlands, co-host of Santa
Marta, announced new drilling in the North Sea just before the conference. The
UK is considering new North Sea fields too, and other countries present, from
Brazil to Tanzania, also have fossil fuel expansion plans. Those decisions will
have to be reversed for this to become the hoped-for “conference of doers”.
Before
the next conference, to take place early next year on the Pacific island of
Tuvalu, which is co-hosting with Ireland, countries are supposed to start the
process of drawing up national roadmaps to the phaseout of fossil fuels. The
organisers want these plans to feed into the broader UN climate negotiating
process and to spur others to join the transition movement.
Roadmaps
offer a way for countries to attract investors, and also provide guidance for
their industries to help ensure the transition to a low-carbon world is fair to
workers and the most vulnerable people. Mary Robinson, the former president of
Ireland, said: “We need three transitions: out of fossil fuels, into renewable
energy for all, and into a world that cares for nature. All must be grounded in
justice.”
Santa
Marta, a historically coal-fuelled town at the heart of a coal- and oil-fuelled
country, may eventually be regarded as ground zero for the demise of fossil
fuels. Fernanda Carvalho, the head of policy for climate and energy at WWF
International, said: “It is here that the seeds of a new,
implementation-focused initiative have been planted. 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.”
But
despite the “contagious” hope felt by many involved in the Santa Marta talks,
there remains a long road ahead.
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