The World Is Searching for Oil. This Summit Is Looking to Get Rid of It.

April 24, 2026

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by Sara Schonhardt (Politico) The gathering in Colombia marks a breakaway effort to accelerate climate action after years of plodding progress under the United Nations. Colombia's environmental minister, Irene Vélez Torres, will help lead a climate conference that stems from frustration with U.N. delays.

A new climate world order is taking shape — without the Earth’s biggest emitters.

A group of some 60 countries is meeting this week on the Colombian coast to figure out how to phase out fossil fuels, after three decades of United Nations-led talks have struggled to produce a clear path for battling climate change.

A lot of big emitters — the European Union, the United Kingdom and Brazil — will be there, as will fossil fuel producers like Canada and Nigeria. Also attending: import-dependent nations like the Philippines and Pakistan, which have been roiled by the Iran war’s effects on oil markets. But one thing that will make the conference in Colombia different is that it won’t include countries that have historically tried to hold back climate action.

“It is hugely important that the Colombians and the Dutch and others have set this up, because we all see how wrecked the COP process is, how vulnerable it is to naysayers and those who want to derail it,” Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s climate commissioner, told POLITICO. “What unites this group is the need to find an alternative. And if anything, world events of the last six weeks have proven them right.”

The first-of-its-kind conference kicking off Friday in the coastal town of Santa Marta marks the beginning of a widening effort outside of the annual climate talks known as COP summits to accelerate the shift to solar, wind and other clean energies. It comes after efforts to reaffirm a global pledge to move away from oil, gas and coal fell apart at the COP30 talks last year in Brazil.

Organizers say the conference is for countries that are committed to clean energy, not those that deny climate change.

“We are not unhappy because the U.S. is not here,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, said in an interview. “We knew that they weren’t going to be here. We weren’t expecting them to be here because their energy policy and their economic policy is to ‘drill, baby, drill.’ So this is not the place for them. Also, we didn’t want to have anyone boycotting our conversations.”

The summit comes as the war in Iran roils global energy markets, and as many countries grow frustrated with the protracted pace of global climate negotiations. U.N. climate talks have struggled for years to get countries to act on their pledges.

That’s led to calls for coalitions of willing countries to move forward separately, even if it means not everyone comes along. “After 30 COPs and so little implementation in terms of phasing out fossil fuels, the conclusion is clear: It has been insufficient,” Vélez said. “This kind of conference is a new multilateralism. It’s inspiring new pathways and new cooperation and new ways of dialogue.”

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Discussions are expected to focus on ways nations can structure their transitions rather than negotiate about the need for them.

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While the Iran war has redrawn the global energy map, countries are divided on whether to accelerate their use of renewables or double down on fossil fuels.

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Activists hope individual countries could create their own road maps to transition away from fossil fuels following the conference. Brazil, as part of its COP30 presidency, is pursuing a road map separate from the U.N. process that it plans to finalize later this year.

Hassing (Bastiaan Hassing, head of international climate policy for the Netherlands), the Dutch diplomat, said one outcome could be that countries work together to strengthen their transitions or connect with financial institutions or businesses to draw investment.

“This is hopefully the start of a longer-running process where we can get together in an atmosphere where we don’t necessarily negotiate but talk about what we can do together to speed up this transition,” he said. READ MORE

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As the UN Global Climate Talks Lose Momentum, a Smaller Coalition Eyes a Fossil Fuel Exit (Inside Climate News)
As Energy, War and Climate Collide, a Conference in Colombia Charts a Path Beyond Fossil Fuels (Inside Climate News)
Hard choices test breakaway climate summit (Politico)
Countries agree to second conference on ditching fossil fuels --- Colombia and the Netherlands will pass the baton to Ireland and Tuvalu to carry on what nearly 60 countries hope becomes a new form of multilateral cooperation. (Politico Pro Climatewire)
CO-HOST TAKEAWAYS ON THE FIRST CONFERENCE ON TRANSITIONING AWAY FROM FOSSIL FUELS (Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels)

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: Attending countries span a spectrum from influential fossil fuel producers like Australia, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico to climate-vulnerable island nations including Fiji, Tuvalu and the Maldives, as well as Denmark, Spain and France and the European Union. Notably absent are the United States, Russia, China and major Gulf petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Offering a perspective from The Elders, a group of former independent world leaders that acts as a moral and ethical voice on issues of peace, justice and climate, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson described the conference as “a new multilateral space for a committee of doers … those who want to collaborate and usher out fossil fuels.”

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At a webinar just days before the conference, Robinson put the conference squarely into the context of current events. “It’s such a serious moment,” she said. “The United States and Israel have waged an illegal war against Iran and the consequences have been felt worldwide.”

She said the erosion of international law and the global economic impacts caused by the Iran war shows why a just transition into renewables is now “a security imperative.” The second major energy shock in just four years isn’t just a wakeup call, she added, but “a clear signal that our energy systems need urgent structural change.”

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Rather than treating civil society as an afterthought, the conference in Santa Marta will include a People’s Summit of community groups, unions, Indigenous leaders and public-interest advocates, called civil society, in the formal process. Organizers hope that a successful meeting could reinvigorate climate activism in participating countries, helping build momentum to ditch fossil fuels as soon as possible.

Holding the conference in troubled times, when “some bullies are even trying to force countries to stay dependent on fossil fuel” is an achievement in itself, Robinson said, showing that much of the world wants to speed up the transition from fossil fuels despite political headwinds.

She noted that last year’s advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice in The Hague clarified that “breaking free from fossil fuels is no longer just a political obligation,” she said, adding that the court said states need to take appropriate action to protect the climate.

Santa Marta should be seen as the start of a new process, not a place “to expect a big, grand declaration,” said Natalie Jones, a senior policy advisor with the International Institute of Sustainable Development, a nonprofit group that closely monitors and analyzes international environmental talks.

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Any step to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels helps, not just for climate reasons, “but also for energy security and affordable energy for households and businesses,” she said.

The current global energy system is uncertain and chaotic, with price spikes and shortages that always hits the most vulnerable people first and hardest. What’s needed, she said, is a “stable and credible policy environment” to create conditions for a faster fossil fuel phaseout. The roadmaps envisioned as the conference starts, she added “are how governments give investors, workers and communities a clearer sense of direction.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Inside Climate News: Participants broke a long-standing taboo by openly linking oil and gas not just to emissions, but to war, displacement and economic instability.

While some major fossil fuel producers keep pushing for expanded oil and gas use, which is linked to warfare, economic shocks and ecological damage, more than 50 countries at the first Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels began developing plans to shift toward renewable energy systems designed for stability and abundance rather than scarcity and conflict.

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They broadly agreed to align their trade and finance policies with their transition plans, potentially creating significant economic momentum toward the faster decarbonization needed to avoid overcooking the planet with greenhouse gases.

The conference can be seen as a climate diplomacy track running parallel with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but on a faster train with friendlier passengers, said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change adaptation and a leader in efforts to accelerate climate action.

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Participants and observers described the meeting as a space where fossil fuels themselves, and not just their emissions, were discussed as the root cause of overlapping crises, from conflict and displacement to economic instability. At past UNFCCC climate talks, those connections were often downplayed, especially in official documents.

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For the countries in Santa Marta, it’s not a question of whether to change, it’s how to change without repeating past mistakes. Veteran policy makers shared space with a younger cohort of advocates and negotiators for whom renewable energy systems are a baseline assumption, not an aspirational goal. Many are from developing countries and experience the risks of fossil fuels as immediate rather than as theoretical, and they challenge the fossil fuel industry’s misleading narrative that their products are needed to alleviate poverty.

“War right now is one of the largest contributors to the climate crisis,” said Faotu Jeng, founder of Clean Earth Gambia, a nonprofit group that has sparked environmental progress. Jeng noted that military emissions are not accurately accounted for under the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming.

In the run-up to the 2015 global climate pact, highly militarized and economically powerful countries, including the United States, indicated they would veto language related to military emissions, but those numbers add up.

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“You don’t debate whether something is climate or conflict or economic instability,” she (Somali peace and development leader Ilwad Elman) said. “You feel it all the same. You feel it as pressure, pressure on land, pressure on water, pressure on movements, pressure on people, and that pressure doesn’t stay contained.”

The Santa Marta discussions helped clarify that transitions are needed “out of fossil fuels, into renewable energy for all, and into a world that cares for nature,” former president of Ireland Mary Robinson said in a statement at the end of the conference.

“All must be grounded in justice,” added Robinson, a founding member of The Elders, a group of former world leaders that advocates for moral and ethical governance. Now is the time, she added, for a growing coalition of climate, justice and nature partnerships to “drive these transitions forward with the fierce urgency they demand.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico: A first-of-its-kind conference that focused on phasing out fossil fuels now confronts the challenge of turning plans into policy.

The vibe was good at the world’s first climate summit outside of the United Nations process. Now comes the hard part.

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The test now is how to put those measures into practice without getting dragged into the same delays and divisions that have stalled global climate talks for years.

“It’s hard. We will not have solved this overnight, but we need to get started on this process,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, the Netherlands’ minister for climate and green growth.

The six-day summit, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, highlighted for many what can happen when a group of willing countries come together to share experiences and seek ways forward, without the influence of the world’s largest emitters and disruptors, such as the U.S., Saudi Arabia and China. The U.S. wasn’t invited.

“In the time allotted, we haven’t got down into the nitty-gritty,” said Rachel Kyte, the United Kingdom’s climate envoy, adding that “we desperately need this space.”

“It is how do we all help each other do something that’s never been done before?” Kyte told POLITICO’s E&E News.

There are risks that the process could plod along or fail to deliver on the promise of making energy sources cleaner. That aim has been top of mind here as the war in Iran sent oil prices to a four-year high as the conference wrapped up. But to many of the government officials, academics, scientists and activists here, this summit was already deemed a success because it avoided the pitfalls of a U.N. process in which a small group of energy-rich nations can derail efforts to slow fossil fuel use.

Now, these nations will need to be specific about their next steps — and who will be involved, said Jules Kortenhorst, co-chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, a coalition focused on supporting the shift to cleaner energy.

That means identifying real world tools that can be used by countries and development banks to finance clean energy, he said.

‘A long-term thing’

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Challenges of our time

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They also want to expand the reach of the summit’s coalition and connect it back to the U.N. process and other climate forums. That could be a challenge if the two blocs are on different paths. While the war in Iran has pushed some countries to think about accelerating the shift to clean energy, others are leaning more on coal or considering more drilling.

Other countries, particularly small island nations, said the discussions in Santa Marta must be heard on a bigger stage — including the U.N. global climate talks known as COP.

“There’s this gorge of silence on a topic that is at the root of this problem,” Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, told reporters. “All of the practical, concrete, real, meaningful discussions we’re having here on how to address that silence, that has to be visible, inform, impact, shape what we’re doing at the COP.”

While the U.S. wasn’t invited because of its commitment to fossil fuel expansion, China also didn’t attend the summit, despite being the dominant producer of clean energy technologies. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Pro Climatewire: Officials from nearly 60 nations have gathered here for two days to discuss how — not whether — to wind down their dependence on oil, gas and coal. Now Colombia and the Netherlands will pass the baton to Ireland and Tuvalu to carry on what many officials hope sets the foundation for a new form of multilateral cooperation.

“We've met over the last couple of days at a moment when the need to transition away from fossil fuels is no longer a distant objective, but an immediate and defining challenge of our time,” Philip Nugent, Ireland’s director general of the environment, said during the closing plenary. “What we've seen over these last days is not only a recognition of that urgency, but an openness, a positivity and a willingness to act on it together.”

The decision to host the conference in the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu sends a powerful signal to the world, he added. READ MORE