Hybrid solar and wind farm in Bannister, New South Wales, Australia. Steve/Adobe Stock

War in the Middle East has caused a global fuel crisis and made the need to decarbonise even more urgent. Not long after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran in February – and Tehran responded with strikes on targets in the Gulf – UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an acceleration of the transition to renewables. ‘In this age of war, climate stress is […] exposing another truth: our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security,’ he said.

His words echoed those of UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, who declared that ‘there is a clear solution to this fossil fuel cost chaos – renewables are now cheaper, safer and faster-to-market, making them the obvious pathway to energy security and sovereignty.’

At COP30, there was ‘a clear notion from some countries and civil society around the need to have a roadmap – but it was also quite visible that we need to get more into the complex question of how do we actually move forward with the transition,’ says Shady Khalil, an Amsterdam-based senior global policy strategist at Oil Change International.

The event in Santa Marta will begin addressing how to ‘collectively create enabling conditions that reward countries to transition’, while achieving their development needs, he says. ‘Santa Marta is coming at the right moment, to send a very important signal that there are countries, and a coalition of countries, and a movement supporting the transition away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way,’ Khalil says.

The mix of attendees – not only on the demand and supply sides, but also financiers – sends ‘a very constructive and hopeful message at a time when we really need it,’ he adds.

Referring to the Colombia conference as well as COP30 and the Belém Declaration, Els Reynaers, Co-Chair of the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee, says what’s evident is that there are ‘highly ambitious nations who […] feel really strongly about moving away from fossil fuels.’ She adds that there was discussion in Belém about COP attendees being required to disclose any affiliations to the fossil fuel industry, in a bid to map influence at the talks and improve transparency.

The recognition of nuclear power as a potential solution to the climate crisis at COP28 in 2023 has also resulted in a renewed push for this energy source, says Reynaers, a partner at M V Kini in Mumbai. ‘We’re looking at a rather strange coming together of various factors which will drive this move away from fossil fuels.’

Andrew Prag, Managing Director for Policy of climate-focused nonprofit the We Mean Business coalition, says the Santa Marta gathering ‘is a very positive outcome.’ The plurilateral process being adopted by the conference attendees is a practical way forward that’s used in other fora, such as the World Trade Organization, he says.

‘There is more momentum behind this issue of fossil fuels than might be expected, given where international politics sits at the minute,’ says Prag. ‘People really do see the positive side of the economic opportunities from clean energy growth, and the economic insecurity risks [inherent in] being dependent on fossil fuels.’ Unlike in past energy crises, ‘we really do have the solutions now,’ he adds.

In Australia, the federal government – as well as some states – have shown how quickly change can happen in the right conditions. Tim Buckley is Director of the think-tank Climate Energy Finance. He highlights that Australia’s government has invested billions of dollars – both in capital and budget support – in decarbonisation and electrification since the beginning of 2023, to try to leverage public money to attract private investment and capital.

This has fed into the positive momentum in Australia. For example, the government’s programme to help people afford and install home batteries for solar PV systems has been expanded as a result of its success.

A knock-on effect of this, combined with improvements in technology and falling costs, has been a rapid increase in distributed energy. This has prompted market regulator the Australian Energy Market Operator to re-evaluate how much new grid is needed for centralised transmission, says Buckley.

At a state level, the build-out of renewable energy in Victoria has made ‘extremely strong progress,’ he says, leading to a three per cent drop in the default market offer – which acts as a de facto cap on prices – for domestic electricity users from July and a five per cent decrease for small businesses.

‘New firmed renewable energy ahead of demand growth means that power prices are coming down for everyone,’ says Buckley. By ‘firmed’, he refers to renewable energy with storage or that’s twinned with flexible generation, such as pumped storage hydro. ‘The deflationary nature of more renewables is critically important at a time when we’re talking about imported oil going through the roof,’ he says.

The challenge, says Buckley, is building enough firmed renewables before retiring coal plants. ‘It’s a clear flag that more renewables, more domestic energy, more energy security and decarbonisation all go hand in hand,’ he says.