Can Countries Create a Roadmap for Ditching Fossil Fuels?
· Time
More than 50 countries are meeting today in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the first international conference on phasing out fossil fuels—in what could prove to be a global turning point for global climate action.
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“This is the first serious attempt to center fossil fuels in global climate cooperation,” says Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. “The conference here really represents a historic opportunity for countries willing to take action on the root cause of climate change, to come together and strengthen international cooperation on the implementation of a phase out of fossil fuels.”
The conference, which was first announced at the annual U.N. climate summit COP30 in Brazil last fall, will be held from April 24 to 29 and co-hosted by the Netherlands and Colombia. Since taking office in 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made winding down fossil fuels a national priority.
The conference comes as countries around the world are feeling choked by rising energy and gas prices from as the war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed oil and gas prices up globally. “The crisis has really exposed the real cost of depending on fossil fuels—in terms of price volatility and energy insecurity,” says Natalie Jones, a senior policy advisor in the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s energy program. “It's really underscored that the transition to renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency is more important than ever—and these are all the topics that will be discussed at this conference.”
Around the world, clean energy is emerging as a more reliable and cost-effective power source. Last year, clean energy generation surpassed the global rise in electricity demand with the share of renewables like solar, wind, and hydropower making up more than one-third of the world's electricity mix for the first time in modern history.
But coordinated global action towards formally transitioning away from oil and gas has so far been absent. While countries meet every year for global climate negotiations, the annual summits are notoriously quiet on the topic of fossil fuels. The 2015 Paris Agreement does not mention fossil fuels, and it took nearly three decades for governments to agree to transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP28 in 2023. In recent years, thousands of oil, gas, and coal lobbyists have participated in the climate summits, which are meant to be focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The most recent global climate conference, COP30, ended last year with no mention of fossil fuels.
What’s more, the COP process requires a consensus, which means that a small minority can block action.
“This conference is so important because it's the first time that countries are getting together outside of COP to really talk about the real cause of climate change, which is fossil fuels,” says Jones.
The countries participating represent one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government. However, some of the world’s biggest emitters—including the U.S., Russia, India, and China—will be absent.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. “What's so valuable about this space is that it affirms that countries willing to take action can do so in spite of the persistent resistance of the biggest petro states and polluters,” says Reisch. “The momentum behind getting off of fossil fuels is unstoppable. The biggest blockers and laggards who have for years really stymied progress in the U.N. climate talks, their absence is in some ways, an opportunity for other countries to step in and to explore what they can do together without those states.”
The conference presents an opportunity to come up with pathways for countries looking to transition away from fossil fuels, and eliminate some of the barriers that encourage fossil fuel reliance.
“The point of it is to be able to get into some of the tricky questions about how to phase out fossil fuels,” says Leo Roberts, associate director for energy transitions at E3G, a climate change think tank.
That includes discussions on how to phase out systems that encourage fossil fuel reliance—like investor-state dispute settlement systems, which allow big companies to sue governments for adopting environmental protection laws, or creating preferential trade agreements for countries that are committed to the transition.
“They're not just things that one country can do by itself,” says Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative.
The conference sets the stage for states to come together to develop a treaty on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Organizers hope to establish, within a year, formal negotiations for a Fossil Fuel Treaty, a binding international framework that would manage a fossil fuel phase-out. A second international conference hosted by the Pacific Island nation Tuvalu, will be hosted within the year.
Experts also hope to see countries come up with their own individualized road maps of what a transition away from fossil fuels might look like on a national level.
“The challenge I would issue to all countries who are attending is what are you doing back home? What are the measures you are taking? What are the plans you are putting in place?” says Jones. “It's all very well to come to these international forums and say, ‘We think this is really important,’ but are you putting your money where your mouth is?”