Global Talks Begin on Phasing Out Fossil Fuels Amid Rising Frustration and Energy Crisis

Governments from nearly 50 countries will gather in Colombia’s Caribbean city of Santa Marta on Friday for a summit aimed at accelerating the global shift away from fossil fuels, amid growing frustration that United Nations climate negotiations have failed to directly address oil, gas and coal production.

The April 24–29 conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, brings together ministers, subnational governments, academics and civil society groups to discuss how to move beyond fossil fuels while ensuring the transition is “just, orderly and equitable,” organizers said.

The meeting reflects growing frustration among some governments and advocates that decades of U.N. Climate negotiations have failed to directly address fossil fuel production — the main driver of global warming — prompting the Santa Marta summit to push the issue outside formal talks.

Organizers say the gathering is intended to open space for a politically sensitive debate that has long been avoided in international climate negotiations. “It is definitely a political space. We are opening a space for discussion that does not exist,” Colombia’s environment minister, Irene Vélez Torres, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the summit.

Unlike formal U.N. Climate negotiations, the meeting is not expected to produce binding commitments. Instead, officials say the goal is to generate a set of proposals and build coalitions of countries willing to move faster on phasing out fossil fuels.

The summit comes as climate activists carrying fake coffins demanded action on fossil fuels in a protest at Cop30 in Brazil in November, highlighting the frustration with the slow pace of global climate talks.

With temperatures at land and sea breaking records, the prospect of limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels looks increasingly remote. It is widely accepted that the only way of avoiding the worst ravages of climate chaos is to slam the brakes on fossil fuels and shift the global economy urgently to a low-carbon footing.

The technologies needed to do that – wind and solar power, electric vehicles, heat pumps for home heating, battery storage – are all available and increasingly affordable. But the inertia of the fossil fuel economy, and the vast vested interests of the oil, gas and coal industries, are working against the shift.