![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/fossil-fuel-phase-out-header.png\")
<\/p>\nKatie Kouchakji, IBA Environment Correspondent Tuesday 14 April 2026<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hybrid solar and wind farm in Bannister, New South Wales, Australia. Steve\/Adobe Stock<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 and Tehran responded with strikes on targets in the Gulf \u2013 UN Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres called for an acceleration of the transition to renewables. \u2018In this age of war, climate stress is [\u2026] exposing another truth: our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
His words echoed those of UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, who declared that \u2018there is a clear solution to this fossil fuel cost chaos \u2013 renewables are now cheaper, safer and faster-to-market, making them the obvious pathway to energy security and sovereignty.\u2019<\/p>\n
At COP30 in November, held in Bel\u00e9m, governments couldn\u2019t agree on language to phase out fossil fuels. However, in parallel to the talks, 24 countries launched and endorsed the Bel\u00e9m Declaration on the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels.<\/p>\n
By early April, 45 countries had signed up to attend the first meeting of the coalition to transition away from fossil fuels. They\u2019ll gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, later in the month to pick up where talks during COP30 left off.<\/p>\n
Colombia\u2019s environment minister, Irene V\u00e9lez Torres, has highlighted that attendees at April\u2019s conference will represent both those vulnerable to the climate crisis \u2013 such as Palau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu \u2013 and fossil fuel producers, including Australia, Canada and the UK.<\/p>\n
\t\tOur addiction to fossil fuels is destabilising both the climate and global security<\/p>\n
\n\t\tAnt\u00f3nio Guterres
UN Secretary-General<\/p>\n
At COP30, there was \u2018a clear notion from some countries and civil society around the need to have a roadmap \u2013 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,\u2019 says Shady Khalil, an Amsterdam-based senior global policy strategist at Oil Change International.<\/p>\n
The event in Santa Marta will begin addressing how to \u2018collectively create enabling conditions that reward countries to transition\u2019, while achieving their development needs, he says. \u2018Santa 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,\u2019 Khalil says.<\/p>\n
The mix of attendees \u2013 not only on the demand and supply sides, but also financiers \u2013 sends \u2018a very constructive and hopeful message at a time when we really need it,\u2019 he adds.<\/p>\n
Referring to the Colombia conference as well as COP30 and the Bel\u00e9m Declaration, Els Reynaers, Co-Chair of the IBA Environment, Health and Safety Law Committee, says what\u2019s evident is that there are \u2018highly ambitious nations who [\u2026] feel really strongly about moving away from fossil fuels.\u2019 She adds that there was discussion in Bel\u00e9m 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u2018We\u2019re looking at a rather strange coming together of various factors which will drive this move away from fossil fuels.\u2019<\/p>\n
Andrew Prag, Managing Director for Policy of climate-focused nonprofit the We Mean Business coalition, says the Santa Marta gathering \u2018is a very positive outcome.\u2019 The plurilateral process being adopted by the conference attendees is a practical way forward that\u2019s used in other fora, such as the World Trade Organization, he says.<\/p>\n
\u2018There is more momentum behind this issue of fossil fuels than might be expected, given where international politics sits at the minute,\u2019 says Prag. \u2018People 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.\u2019 Unlike in past energy crises, \u2018we really do have the solutions now,\u2019 he adds.<\/p>\n
In Australia, the federal government \u2013 as well as some states \u2013 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\u2019s government has invested billions of dollars \u2013 both in capital and budget support \u2013 in decarbonisation and electrification since the beginning of 2023, to try to leverage public money to attract private investment and capital.<\/p>\n
This has fed into the positive momentum in Australia. For example, the government\u2019s programme to help people afford and install home batteries for solar PV systems has been expanded as a result of its success.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
At a state level, the build-out of renewable energy in Victoria has made \u2018extremely strong progress,\u2019 he says, leading to a three per cent drop in the default market offer \u2013 which acts as a de facto cap on prices \u2013 for domestic electricity users from July and a five per cent decrease for small businesses.<\/p>\n
\u2018New firmed renewable energy ahead of demand growth means that power prices are coming down for everyone,\u2019 says Buckley. By \u2018firmed\u2019, he refers to renewable energy with storage or that\u2019s twinned with flexible generation, such as pumped storage hydro. \u2018The deflationary nature of more renewables is critically important at a time when we\u2019re talking about imported oil going through the roof,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
The challenge, says Buckley, is building enough firmed renewables before retiring coal plants. \u2018It\u2019s a clear flag that more renewables, more domestic energy, more energy security and decarbonisation all go hand in hand,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Kouchakji, IBA Environment Correspondent Tuesday 14 April 2026 Hybrid solar and wind farm in Bannister, New South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-379364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}