Nigeria on Tuesday joined about 60 nations in the first global talks on phasing out fossil fuels, which kicked off in Colombia on Tuesday, casting an exit from oil and gas as not just a climate priority but vital for energy independence. Ministers are seeking to reignite the shift away from planet-heating fossil fuels at the conference in Santa Marta amid a deepening global energy crisis triggered by the Iran war.
“We in Europe…are losing half a billion euros each day this war continues,” the EU’s climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra told delegates in the coastal city. “We already had a very good reason to move on (from fossil fuels) for climate action…We now also have it for commercial reasons, and reasons of independence.” The conference was announced last year after nations failed to include an explicit reference to fossil fuels in the final deal reached at the UN COP30 climate summit in Brazil.
But organisers say the Middle East war — which has throttled Gulf energy exports — has underscored the urgency of breaking fossil fuel dependence. In a speech to delegates on Tuesday, Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro delivered a blunt message: fossil fuels “lead to death,” he said.
Some import-reliant nations in Santa Marta spoke of fuel rationing and soaring prices at home as energy supplies dried up. “Some people use independence, some people use sovereignty, but basically they need energy security,” the UK’s climate envoy Rachel Kyte told AFP in Santa Marta.
“Increasingly, the world is concluding that fossil fuels are a source of instability.” On the list of attendees are major fossil fuel producers Canada, Norway, and Australia, and developing oil giants Nigeria, Angola, and Brazil. They join coal-reliant emerging markets, Turkey and Vietnam, and small island nations extremely vulnerable to climate shocks, among others.