The first international conference on phasing out the oil, gas and coal igniting the climate crisis ended with 57 governments representing every continent and a third of the global economy declaring the transition away from fossil fuels is now irreversible.

“Actions taken to date prove that the energy transition is past its point of no return,” the coalition declared in its closing document, affirming all members were “ready to advance their transition away from fossil fuels.”

The momentum is partly driven by concern for the planet, but also by a strategic desire for the energy independence that renewables could provide in an era of geopolitical instability – a case sharpened by the havoc the war in the Middle East was wreaking on the global economy as delegates gathered on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

“In a time that has been marked by fragmentation, that has been affected by war, by mistrust and the climate crisis, to sit here together and talk about the challenges, talk about the taboos, it’s a deep transformation of policy,” Irene Vélez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister and conference co-chair, said in her closing remarks in Santa Marta.

“When they look back at us from the future, they will remember that we were there, working on the challenges of our time,” Vélez Torres added. “That we decided not to focus on an economy built on war and destruction — we decided instead that it was necessary to prioritise life, security, certainty, sovereignty and solidarity.”

The conference produced no binding commitments, no finance pledges, no promises of emissions cuts — that wasn’t the point. Instead, organisers pitched the summit as a “safe space” for countries already committed to phasing out fossil fuels to speak frankly.

No negotiations, no consensus text to be watered down, no red lines passed down from governments to throw a wrench into discussions. A space free of the fossil fuel lobbyists who fill the corridors of UN climate summits by the thousands, both openly and embedded in petrostate delegations, often outnumbering full national delegation teams.

“The fact we didn’t have negotiations here makes for such a different dynamic,” said Stientje van Veldhoven, the Dutch climate minister and co-chair alongside Vélez Torres. “The psychology of the Santa Marta process is something that we will definitely make sure to carry forward.”

A coalition born of frustration

Three years on from the COP28 breakthrough in Dubai, where nearly 200 countries agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels,” efforts to translate the pledge into concrete action have hit a wall.

Negotiations to agree a phase-out roadmap at COP30 in Brazil last November were torpedoed by a coalition of petrostates led by Saudi Arabia, which drew over half of the nations in attendance to its side in opposing the plan. The final text in Belém contained no reference to “fossil fuels” at all, a marked step backwards for the UN climate process.

Without that failure, the Santa Marta conference would not exist. Conceived in the hours after COP30 collapsed, the new process was born of frustration with the gridlock of consensus-based UN climate diplomacy. But its architects stressed that it is meant to be complementary to mainstream COPs, not to replace them.

“It’s very important that we agree on the fact that we want this conference, this process, to be like an accelerator for what we want to do in the context of UNFCCC,” van Veldhoven said, adding that the chairs have already been in touch with the COP31 presidency.

Alongside government ministers, the conference included nearly 3,000 representatives of subnational governments, trade unions, scientists, civil society groups, Indigenous Peoples, women’s organisations and youth representatives, all named in the closing document as equal participants rather than observers, the title they hold in UN negotiations.

“A new reality is taking shape: this is no longer a one-off moment, but the foundation of an ongoing international process dedicated to phasing out fossil fuels,” said Kumi Naidoo, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. “What is emerging is a process that can finally match climate diplomacy to the scale of the crisis.”

Countries will attempt to carry the momentum forward at the next phase-out conference, confirmed in the closing hours to be held in 2027 on the Pacific island of Tuvalu and co-hosted by Ireland, pairing a wealthy European island with one across the globe at risk of disappearing under sea-level rise.

“We are making history. We have proven, in the words of our youth, that another way is possible,” Tuvalu’s representative said. “The world is in a fossil fuel crisis, of climate breakdown, of conflict, of instability. But here in Santa Marta, we have planted a seed of solutions.”

The tailwind from Hormuz

Running through the conference was the war between Israel, the United States and Iran, which has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, tightening gas supplies across Europe and Asia and skyrocketing oil prices to their highest level in years.

On the same day delegates closed proceedings, US President Donald Trump told reporters Iran would have to “cry uncle” before he lifted what he called his “genius” blockade. Brent crude hit $126 a barrel hours later, approaching the spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

For the three-quarters of the world that depends on fossil fuel imports, the message of the past five days was hard to miss: their energy costs, inflation rates, fiscal stability and the prices their citizens pay for food and fuel are tied to decisions made by a handful of leaders in Washington, Moscow and Riyadh – none of whom were in Santa Marta.

The coalition’s closing document named the Hormuz crisis directly, calling the disruptions a demonstration “that reducing fossil fuel dependencies is critical” to “keep our planet livable, to safeguard energy security, and to build economic resilience to volatile fossil fuel markets.” 

“Destructive oil wars, widening fuel and food shocks, and a mounting climate crisis only bolster the conviction that breaking free from the fossil fuel system is not a matter of magical realism but of radical realism, in line with science and the law,” said Nikki Reisch, director of climate and energy at the Centre for International Environmental Law.

Van Veldhoven framed the crisis as part of the case for moving faster.

“If these countries significantly reduce their dependency on fossil fuels, it means they’ll be investing in their own economy instead of importing fossil fuels from abroad,” she told Bloomberg. “It means they’ll be investing in clean technologies, but it also means they’ll be shielding their economies against the kind of price shocks we’re seeing currently.”

France became the first major economy to act on that argument at scale during the conference, releasing a national roadmap to eliminate fossil fuels from its energy mix by 2050. The plan does not introduce new pledges but consolidates existing French climate and energy targets under a single explicit goal: ending the use of oil, gas and coal for energy purposes by 2050.

Globally, the picture is mixed.

Fossil fuels remain responsible for more than 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, but new renewable capacity in 2025 is nearly 50% higher than in 2023, and renewables are meeting nearly all new energy demand, according to the International Energy Agency.

Investment in the energy transition reached a record $2.4 trillion in 2024, more than double 2019 levels, though it is concentrated in advanced economies and China, IRENA found.

“This momentum is not yet enough to deliver the needed breakthrough,” said Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead at Oil Change International. “The richest polluting countries must take immediate action to accelerate their transitions at home and show up with meaningful international economic cooperation.”

Coalition of the self-aware

The outcome document released in Santa Marta lays out in candid detail the shortcomings of the coalition in Colombia, and the distance all nations still have to go to achieve the transition away from fossil fuels.

Chief among these admissions is the degree to which most nations in attendance continue to be dependent on oil, gas or coal for the public revenues that fund health, infrastructure and other government functions, and ensure energy security. Until governments find a way to replace that funding, walking away from fossil fuel production remains off the table. 

“The countries present in Santa Marta still have structural dependencies to overcome, including fiscal dependencies, debt constraints, the dependence of the financial architecture on fossil fuels,” the outcome paper states. “Transitioning away from fossil fuels is more than replacing one energy source with another … the transition itself is complex.”

Many others simply do not have the financial headroom to invest in renewables due to looming debt payments and empty balance sheets.

“We must confront economic dependence on fossil fuels that shape the realities we face,” Tuvalu’s delegate said. “Unsustainable debt, reliance on fossil fuel revenues, and a global financial system that was not built for us, and too often fails us.”

The coalition also recognised the limits of its own power. While the alliance contains a meaningful contingent of major fossil fuel producers – Norway, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Angola and Colombia itself – what it does not contain is a critical mass of global fossil fuel supply or demand.

The 57 countries present make up about a fifth of global fossil fuel production, a third of oil and gas demand, and the same share of world economic output.

The five biggest fossil fuel producers – the United States, China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia – were all absent. Together, they control nearly half the world economy, and pump about 45% of the world’s oil, half its natural gas and three-quarters of its coal, far outstripping the heft of the Santa Marta coalition on all fronts.

“We are here with an immense group, and yet it is still too small a group for what our ambition actually is,” van Veldhoven said. “Let’s make sure that we continue to drive this process as an open coalition. That means we have to ensure visibility of the outcomes and use that as an invitation to others to join us.”

Rockstars to the rescue

A concrete outcome of the summit is the creation of a new scientific panel to advise nations on the practice and policy of the fossil fuel phase-out, an idea born in the halls of COP30, which Vélez Torres pitched as a sort of climate scientists’ Avengers team of “rock star academics”.

“This panel not only repairs a historical debt of an organisation dedicated, finally and for the first time, to overcoming fossil fuels in the energy matrix,” she said, “it will also tell us about other types of challenges regarding the social and economic limitations of being able to carry out this transition as quickly as possible.”

The Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) will unite over 100 scientists and academics to guide nations in policymaking and emissions pathway analysis with the goal of keeping the 1.5°C warming target enshrined in the Paris Agreement alive.

The independent panel will focus on mapping policy options, green technologies and financial mechanisms that can be harnessed by countries to reduce emissions and fossil fuel dependence.

Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-lead of SPGET, said it will operate as a “scientific service” to governments, helping them figure out the balance of energy supply and demand with a “scientifically aligned, just and orderly phase out of fossil fuels.”

“[The panel] will also enable us to have feedback into the COP process so that we can keep the fossil fuel phase-out discussions in plenary at the COP meeting alive,” Rockström said. “Now is the moment to tip the scales, to not allow anymore that a few actors at the COP meetings always block the most important discussion of them all: the phase-out of coal, oil and gas.”

The hard the work begins

The final agreement struck at Santa Marta establishes three “workstreams”: working groups of countries, experts and civil society that will meet between now and the next conference to develop policy options on the thorniest questions of the phase-out.

The first will focus on national emissions roadmaps, taking specific aim at what Vélez Torres called the “punto ciego,” or blind spot, in the Paris Agreement: exported emissions. 

Under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) mandated in the Paris Accords, countries report emissions on a territorial basis, but not the emissions from fossil fuels they extract and sell to other countries.

For major exporters, the effect on emissions calculations is enormous. Norway’s exported emissions from oil and gas are roughly ten times its territorial emissions. Saudi Arabia’s full emissions footprint rises to two and a half times its reported emissions, closing in on 5% of global CO2 on its own.

“We are not making clear commitments about how we are going to control the emissions that are exported from producing countries,” said Vélez Torres, whose country, Colombia, sees its emissions more than double when its coal and oil exports are counted. “We want to be very clear, very honest about how to transition away from production as well.”

Winding down production is one of the most complex questions in the phase-out debate. If demand falls first, producer countries face collapsing revenues and an economic crisis. If supply falls first, importers face energy shortages.

A complementary workstream announced in Santa Marta, backed by the OECD, will look at how exporters and importers can coordinate their wind-downs so the two declines move in step, avoiding a scenario where one side pulls back faster than the other, leaving producers without buyers or importers without fuel before clean alternatives can fill the gap.

Money traps, and future hopes

The final workstream, supported by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, takes on what the co-hosts called the three “traps” holding states back from moving faster on fossil fuel phase-outs: finance, debt and subsidies. It is, in many ways, the hardest of the three.

Without alternative revenues lined up, governments cannot turn off the tap on production that pays their bills. The constraint tightens further as interest payments squeeze public budgets and credit ratings for developing nations render borrowing exceedingly expensive, leaving fossil fuel revenue indispensable and crowding out renewables investment.

Then there are the subsidies. Governments worldwide handed roughly $1.3 trillion in direct support to fossil fuel producers and consumers in 2022 to keep pump and power prices low, according to the IMF, and as much as $7 trillion once the unpriced costs of pollution and climate damage are factored in.

The direct figure alone is more than half the $2.4 trillion the world invested in the entire energy transition the same year, tilting the market against cheaper renewables as subsidies keep expensive fossil fuels price-competitive. 

In Ghana, the financial realities of fossil fuel dependence remain too steep to overcome, its delegate told the conference, despite the country supporting the phase-out goal.

“In Ghana, fossil fuels remain deeply tied to government revenues that fund essential public services and to our broader energy systems,” he said. “We need a fossil fuel treaty that creates the necessary architecture for a just transition.”

That the coalition is willing to talk openly about the financial dependency at the heart of the phase-out is, for many participants, the most encouraging signal to come out of Santa Marta.

Whether it can build bridges and expand its membership as the climate crisis accelerates is the question that will loom over COP31 in Antalya later this year, and in the run-up to Tuvalu in 2027.

With the workstreams set and the next conference scheduled, it fell to a 10-year-old from Colombia to remind the room what the diplomacy was for. 

“Of the 12 million children we have in Colombia, eight out of ten of us are affected by fossil fuels and weather changes,” Paula Pedro, representing the Colombian children and youth coalition, told the assembly. “What we need, for the children, is that the people in this room do the math, but not only on paper, but accomplish change as a matter of fact.”

“We’re not only the future,” Pedro said. “We are the present and beyond.”

Image Credits: Colombian Environment Ministry, Colombian Environment Ministry, COP30, ColomColombian Environment Ministrybian Ministry o, Colombian Environment Ministry, Colombian Environment Ministry, Colombian Environment Ministry.