The energy transition stopped being just an environmental issue and became a debate about the economy, debt, inequality and even democracy. That was the tone that set the international summit held this week in Santa Marta, Colombia, where representatives from 57 countries They discussed how to progressively abandon the
The host of the meeting, the Colombian president stated that the current economic model based on oil, gas and coal is taking the world towards an extreme situation.. “We are heading towards barbarism. And barbarism is the prelude, or the very essence, of fascism,” the Colombian president warned during the opening of the meeting.
Petro also accused fossil fuel interests of blocking any profound changes. “There is an inertia in the power and economics of this archaic form of energy — fossil fuels — that leads to death,” he said. “The question we must ask ourselves is whether capitalism can really adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”
The conference, presented as the first major international summit focused exclusively on abandoning fossil fuels, It brought together ministers, financial experts, activists and social representatives for several days. The objective was to advance an energy transition that many economies consider inevitable, but which continues to face enormous political and economic obstacles.
One of the topics that gained the most weight in the conversations was the debt of the countries of the Global South. Several participants noted that many economies still depend on oil or gas exports simply to pay interest and sustain basic services.
“There are many fossil fuel-producing countries in the global south that are forced to expand fossil fuel production simply to pay their debts,” said Tzeporah Berman, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative.
The situation is especially worrying in Africa, where the debt has skyrocketed in recent years. According to the experts gathered in Santa Marta, the high interests and rising prices of food and energy are leaving many governments with no room to invest in renewables.
Meanwhile, some governments are already beginning to put dates on the table. France took advantage of the summit to present its plan for a progressive exit from fossil fuels. The country plans to eliminate coal from its electrical system before 2027, reduce its dependence on oil by 2045 and abandon fossil gas by 2050.
French climate envoy Benoit Faraco assured that the objective is to turn France into “the Saudi Arabia of electricity in Europe”, exporting clean energy to other European countries thanks to the combination of nuclear and renewable energy.
