For years, global climate discussions have centered on managing heat-trapping emissions: how rapidly they increase, when they reach their peak, and the rate at which they decrease. Underpinning these statistics is a crucial issue that world leaders have been under immense political and economic pressure to sidestep: transitioning the world away from its harmful reliance on fossil fuels, the main contributors to global climate change. This very topic is set to be explored next week in Santa Marta, Colombia.
Scientific evidence clearly shows that ongoing fossil fuel production and consumption are utterly incompatible with a sustainable climate. The consequences of continued dependence on fossil fuels are evident in the daily occurrences of deadly heatwaves, intensifying floods, worsening wildfires, rising sea levels, increasing public health issues, water shortages, and environmental degradation. Many have experienced these impacts firsthand. Yet, despite acknowledging the climate crisis’s urgency, political systems have struggled to articulate what people and science have long recognized: fossil fuels must be phased out.
Despite the scientific consensus, international climate negotiations have found it challenging to directly address the role of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. At COP28 in 2023, nations agreed for the first time to move away from fossil fuels, but implementing this consensus has been difficult. The latest global climate talks, COP30, concluded without a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
In response, some governments refused to accept this omission. Led by Colombia and the Netherlands, a group of countries established a separate international platform, not intended to replace the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but to focus on practical measures to transition from fossil fuels. This decision marks a shift towards addressing the economic, social, and legal challenges of fossil fuel dependence, indicating emerging leadership and potential progress in various arenas.
Simultaneously, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago initiated a process to develop a Roadmap for Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in a Just, Orderly, and Equitable Manner, opening a consultation process for input from all parties. The upcoming June UNFCCC intersessional talks leading to COP31 will be crucial for finding progress on this contentious issue. The Santa Marta conference could offer valuable practical insights.
From Avoidance to Acknowledgment and Back Again
Throughout the history of United Nations (UN) climate talks known as COP, countries have often avoided explicitly addressing fossil fuels. Negotiators focused on emissions targets and temperature goals while ignoring the sources of those emissions. This avoidance was intentional, as coal, oil, and gas are central to powerful economic and political interests, and the fossil fuel industry has worked to ensure they aren’t directly held accountable.
The climate agreement reached in 2023 during Dubai’s COP28 was a turning point. While fossil fuels had been mentioned in earlier talks in Glasgow, where coal phasedown was first called for, Dubai’s agreement went further. For the first time in nearly three decades, the outcome text explicitly called for transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems. Although the language lacked firm timelines and full clarity, it marked a departure from decades of avoidance.
However, the progress at COP28 also highlighted the vulnerability of consensus-based negotiations. When COP30 in Belém, Brazil, concluded, the latest text omitted any mention of fossil fuels. This was notable because, despite more than 80 countries calling for a roadmap to end fossil fuels, political resistance prevailed once again.
Fossil Fuel Influence at Climate Talks
The persistent failure to explicitly address fossil fuels in climate agreements reflects the fossil fuel industry’s enduring influence within the negotiations. This includes the presence of ExxonMobil’s Darren Woods at the talks in Dubai and Shell’s claims of influencing the Paris agreement. It also highlights the ongoing failure of Global North countries to provide climate finance for lower-income countries to transition away from fossil fuels equitably.
At COP30 in Belém, over 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists attended, making up about one in every twenty-five participants. This was the largest recorded presence of fossil fuel industry representatives at a UN climate summit. Industry lobbyists outnumbered the official delegations of nearly every country.
This influence affects which language survives the negotiating process. Proposals committing governments to phasing out fossil fuels are often weakened or removed, while voluntary and vague formulations remain. Even when fossil fuels are named, as they were in Dubai, the pushback is immediate and coordinated.
The result is a persistent disconnect between climate science, finance, and action. Science demands a rapid and managed decline in fossil fuel production coupled with a just, funded transition, but negotiations influenced by financial interests in delay struggle to even mention fossil fuels.
When Consensus Fails, Leadership Matters
The UNFCCC’s consensus-based approach is crucial for ensuring every country, regardless of size, has a voice in global climate agreements. Unfortunately, fossil fuel entities and some countries have used it to dilute or obstruct ambitious outcomes.
As the COP30 text was released, Colombia and the Netherlands announced they would co-host the first International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels in April 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia. This announcement signaled that certain governments are unwilling to compromise on ambition at the expense of global populations.
History demonstrates that such leadership can drive change. When multilateral forums stall, smaller groups of committed governments have redefined what is possible. These efforts don’t replace established intergovernmental processes but create pressure, ideas, and political space that reshape them over time.
By starting a process focused on fossil fuel phaseout, Colombia and the Netherlands are responding to calls from frontline communities, Indigenous peoples, climate-vulnerable nations, and experts who argue that climate action must address fossil fuel production, not just emissions at the source.
What This Conference Is Designed to Do
The first International Conference on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels aims to shift the global conversation from recognition to action. Its goal is to develop practical strategies for halting fossil fuel expansion and managing a fair and orderly transition away from fossil fuels.
The conference is structured to address unresolved gaps in global climate talks. Over several days, participants will engage with the technical, economic, fiscal, labor, and governance challenges of fossil fuel decline and explore opportunities for transitioning to clean energy. This includes managing public revenues and jobs in fossil fuel-dependent economies, expanding access to clean and affordable energy, and stopping new fossil fuel projects while addressing existing harms.
The meeting aims for shared outcomes. Participants will work towards laying the foundation for a global roadmap for fossil fuel phaseout, alongside principles and financing frameworks for a just transition.
Equally important is how the conference is organized. Scientists, workers, subnational governments, Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities, and civil society are all involved, ensuring transition pathways are informed by evidence, lived experience, and public participation.
The conference marks a significant step in transforming fossil fuel phaseout from a debated demand into a coordinated global initiative, based on responsibility, fairness, and shared leadership.
What a Fast, Fair Fossil Fuel Phaseout Really Means
A fossil fuel phaseout is often mischaracterized by fossil fuel interests as an abrupt shutdown or an unrealistic goal. In reality, it is a structured process already underway.
Phaseout means a swift and sustained decline in the production and use of coal, oil, and gas, aiming for near-zero use. While some limited applications may be challenging to eliminate fully, most fossil fuel use can be replaced with direct electrification, renewable energy, efficiency, energy storage, and demand-side solutions.
Fast means acting on timelines informed by climate science and technological viability, prioritizing significant emissions reductions this decade rather than postponing action. Technologies for these reductions already exist and are increasingly cost-effective and efficient.
Fair means prioritizing people. It involves addressing the disproportionate pollution burdens on low-income communities and communities of color, supporting workers and regions affected by the transition, and ensuring universal and democratic access to affordable, reliable, and clean energy. Wealthy nations and fossil fuel producers, with the greatest historical responsibility for emissions, must lead and provide financial support for transitions elsewhere.
A just phaseout doesn’t depend on unproven or marginal solutions to justify ongoing fossil fuel expansion. Technologies like carbon capture or carbon removal may have limited roles, but they cannot address environmental injustices and public health harms caused by fossil fuels and are not substitutes for immediate and significant reductions in fossil fuel production and use.
Achieving a Just Fossil Fuel Phaseout Requires More than a Technological Shift
Transitioning away from fossil fuels demands a coordinated approach that combines proven clean energy solutions, deliberate planning, and sustained public investment to ensure that people and communities benefit, rather than suffer, from the change. Numerous studies indicate that a rapid shift to clean energy is beneficial for the economy and public health, while addressing the climate crisis. Fossil fuel price volatility poses a significant challenge to household budgets, especially for those with the lowest incomes. Meanwhile, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, paired with battery storage, are quickly becoming the most affordable new power sources worldwide.
However, technology alone doesn’t ensure a just transition. Phasing out fossil fuels affects real people whose livelihoods and community services have long been tied to extraction and combustion. This is why a fast and fair phaseout requires proactive policies to support workers and communities before disruption occurs. Evidence-based transition plans should include wage replacement, continued health coverage, pension protections, retraining, and job placement assistance for displaced workers. These investments are modest compared to the overall cost of the energy transition and are essential to ensuring that workers who powered the economy for generations are not left behind. Communities also need targeted support to diversify their economies, stabilize public budgets, and plan for a future beyond fossil fuels.
A just transition to clean energy also needs to ensure that the benefits reach everyone, especially the most vulnerable communities. Renewable energy can reduce energy costs and pollution overall, but without intentional design, they risk reproducing existing inequities. When designing a roadmap, we must ensure that Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, and low-income communities have full access to the new jobs, economic development, and entrepreneurship initiatives that accelerated commitments to clean energy will yield. While renewable energy will likely lower costs overall, low- and moderate-income households should be particularly supported in accessing clean energy technologies and reducing their energy burdens. And through it all, frontline communities directly affected by changes in energy policy and practice should have power in decision-making processes.
Drawing the Roadmap
The fight for a fossil fuel phaseout is fundamentally about honesty and political will. Honesty regarding what drives climate change, who bears its costs, and what is needed to create a safer, healthier, and more just world.
The absence of fossil fuels from COP30’s text serves as a reminder that progress is not assured, and powerful interests are persistent. However, the leadership demonstrated by countries taking initiative, and by communities demanding change, indicates that silence is no longer an option.
A global phaseout of fossil fuels is both necessary and achievable. The challenge now is to accelerate it—fairly, deliberately, and collectively—and to ensure that the roadmap we create leaves no one behind.
