Governments start daring to say the energy F-words

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After 30 UN climate COP summits, a growing number of participants are starting to lose patience. Much of the unhappiness is linked to the principle of global consensus that underpins the process.

Critics say this results in a lowest-common-denominator effect, with COP agreements watered down to satisfy the countries least enthusiastic about climate action. That’s been especially conspicuous with regard to language on moving away from fossil fuels, which has been resisted strongly by big oil, gas and coal producers.

This week brought the launch of a parallel process with some important differences. It’s focused entirely on the transition from fossil fuels, which major producers have sought to sideline at COPs. And it’s been created as a forum only for governments that seriously want to pursue this goal, rather than trying to find common ground among all nations. Can it make a difference?

The fossil fuel transition taboo is breaking down

It would be easy to give a dismissive take on the conference that took place this week in Colombia on the transition away from fossil fuels.

The world’s three top carbon emitters — China, the US and India — were not officially represented. Nor were most of the biggest fossil fuel producers. The conference produced no major binding commitments. The most eye-catching national statement at the event — France’s unveiling of its strategy for junking coal, oil and gas — was a repackaged summary of existing policies.

Yet the event was much more significant than it might have looked at first glance.

Dodging the subject

For decades, international climate talks have shied away from tackling head-on the biggest driver of global warming: fossil fuel usage. The term “fossil fuels” was never even mentioned in the final agreed text at the first 25 UN climate summits.

That run was broken in 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow — albeit barely so, with a timidly worded mention of “accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”.

Finally, in 2023 at COP28 in Dubai, countries agreed on a statement of what had long been obvious: that tackling climate change would require “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. But the historic language was followed by little in the way of implementation.

At last year’s COP30 in Brazil, some nations pushed in vain for an agreement to produce a “roadmap” on how this transition would happen. Once again, the summit’s closing text contained no mention of the F-words.

A new approach

So the first intergovernmental conference explicitly dedicated to this subject would be noteworthy, even if only a few countries participated. In fact, more than 50 showed up this week in the Colombian port city of Santa Marta — including significant fossil fuel producers such as Canada, Brazil, Norway, Mexico, Nigeria, Angola, Australia, the UK and Colombia itself.

Other officials came from sizeable economies including Chile, Bangladesh, Turkey and the EU (plus national delegations from its biggest member states), as well as small climate-vulnerable countries such as Vanuatu and the Maldives.

Altogether, participating nations accounted for about a fifth of global fossil fuel production and a third of consumption, the Colombian hosts said.

Not present were governments that have resisted ambitious fossil fuel language at previous COPs, including big oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, along with China and India, the two biggest coal-producing nations. Nor was Donald Trump’s US administration, which has condemned efforts to move away from fossil fuels.

Organisers had decided not to invite countries that are pursuing an “extractivist agenda”, explained Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister, who chaired the conference along with her Dutch counterpart Stientje van Veldhoven.

Not for everyone

This would be a problem if the event had been intended as a step towards global consensus, as is required for COP decisions. Instead the conference, held outside the UN climate process, reflects a different theory of change: that a sufficiently large ​g​roup of ambitious nations can make stronger progress by driving momentum among themselves.

“By showing the benefits of the transition, they can build confidence and bring others along,” as Chetna Hareesh Kumar of the NewClimate Institute puts it.

At Santa Marta, nations agreed to explore how trade measures, including bilateral agreements, can support the move away from fossil fuels. Other ideas raised included a binding intergovernmental treaty — a concept being formally discussed by more than a dozen nations including Colombia, Pakistan and Kenya — though this was not formally endorsed by the conference.

France drew attention by publishing its plan for stopping the use of oil, gas and coal for energy by 2050. None of the individual targets in there were new, having been set as part of France’s wider climate commitments. But by issuing a strategy document so starkly focused on dumping fossil fuels, France has set a precedent for other governments to engage more candidly with the subject.

A new international “workstream” will help other countries to develop similar plans, alongside others focused on trade and finance, the conference co-chairs announced in Santa Marta.

The road ahead

The gathering came as the Brazilian government works on a global roadmap proposal for the transition from fossil fuels, for discussion at this year’s COP31 summit in Turkey. (It decided to do so in its capacity as the host of COP30, despite that event’s failure to reach consensus on whether a roadmap should be created.)

Brazil has asked for input from other governments, which has been rolling in over the past month. It’s taken a wildly varying range of forms.

Timor-Leste, writing on behalf of the 44-strong Least Developed Countries group, stressed the need for expanded green energy finance to help poor nations move away from fossil fuels. The EU called for the roadmap to emphasise carbon pricing, and an end to new oil drilling and coal power plants.

South Korea wrote that the document should avoid pushing a “one size fits all pathway” on countries facing differing circumstances. Russia complained that climate action should not involve “restricting particular energy sources”.

This kind of debate is what we should expect if the world is to engage seriously with the question of how to move away from fossil fuels — a subject that governments have treated with a strange squeamishness for far too long.

It’s set to continue when Brazil presents its roadmap proposal at November’s COP31 in Turkey, and at the second fossil fuel transition conference, which will be hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland early next year.

An important question is whether this “coalition of the willing” can expand to include other big fossil fuel producers and consumers such as China — which last week gave its own unusually stark pronouncement on this theme, calling for “strict control” of fossil fuel consumption, and warning local officials that they would be judged on whether they adhere to this guidance. A long-standing, needless taboo is being eroded fast.

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