Santa Marta is one of the Caribbean’s major coal export hubs. Choosing it as the venue for the first international conference on exiting fossil fuels was a deliberate choice. From April 24 to 29, 2026, sixty governments gather here to discuss how to stop burning coal, gas and oil — as the war with Iran sends global energy prices soaring.
Countries such as Brazil, Germany, Canada, Nigeria and Italy among others are committed to discussing how, concretely, to dismantle an energy system built on one hundred years of fossil fuels. Among the notable absentees: United States, China, Saudi Arabia.
The choice to operate outside the UN COP format is not accidental. After Dubai 2023 and the Belém flop, the patience of many governments with the consensus mechanism between almost 200 nations is running out. When Saudi Arabia can block any reference to fossils in the final text of a conference, the negotiation becomes a ritual of collective frustration.
Santa Marta works differently: no binding agreements, no texts to be refined to the millimetre. The objective is to produce a technical-political report – which explains priorities, policy options and shared strategies – capable of fueling the next steps of climate diplomacy, towards COP31 and the second conference already announced in Tuvalu in 2027. “We are not negotiating ambitions, we are not negotiating commitments. It is rather a question of sharing how this is done”, explains Stientje van Veldhoven, climate minister of the Netherlands, co-organisers of the event with Colombia. The point is to understand which financial instruments are needed for the industrial transition, how fossil subsidies are reformed, and how investments in renewables are attracted.
War as an argument for renewables
The conflict with Iran makes the cost of dependence on fossil fuels physically evident, on the bill and at the petrol pump. The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers the crisis resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to be the worst since the 1970s. Asian economies suffer from fuel shortages, European ones from out-of-control energy prices. “This war has repercussions around the world because of our dependence on fossil fuels. The less dependent we are on fossil fuels, the less vulnerable we are,” says van Veldhoven.
The data confirms that the opposite direction is already feasible. Since 2010, the spread of renewables has cut fossil imports in over one hundred countries, eliminating 700 million tons of coal and 400 billion cubic meters of gas, with savings estimated by the IEA at 1,300 billion dollars. In 2025, investments in clean energy will reach approximately two-thirds of global energy spending. In 91% of world markets, renewables already cost less than new fossil plants.
Italy in Santa Marta
Italy participates. Francesco Corvaro, special envoy for climate change, is in Santa Marta and declares that “in the fight against climate change it is not whoever arrives first who wins, but whoever manages to build the broadest possible coalition”. The problem is that internal energy policy choices tell a different story. The Italian climate think tank Ecco presented a merciless analysis on the eve of the conference. Italy is among the European countries most dependent on gas, almost entirely imported: only 5% is produced on national territory, 63% arrives via pipeline, 32% as LNG. In the first three months of 2026, gas sets the price of Italian electricity for 89% of the hours. In Spain, thanks to a more balanced mix, the same percentage is 15%.
Renewables are growing, but too slowly. In 2025, Italy will install around 7.2 GW of new capacity, mostly photovoltaic – but the cumulative 2023-2025 capacity covers just 30% of the 70 GW target for 2030 set in the Pniec. At this rate, the goal is not achievable.
The issue of subsidies and stranded assets
To complicate the picture, there are some recent choices that go in the opposite direction to the commitments made in international fora: the extension of the exit from coal, the Bill Decree – which reimburses gas-fired electricity producers for ETS costs, weakening the main European carbon pricing instrument – and the environmentally harmful subsidies for fossil fuels which, according to Ecco, exceed 19.6 billion euros per year. And then there are the strategies of Eni and Snam, which continue to plan new gas infrastructures: from the expansion of flows from Algeria to the doubling of the TAP. If global demand for fossils reaches its structural peak by 2030 — as the IEA predicts — part of these investments risks turning into stranded assets: plants that consumers will pay for without being able to fully exploit. The 2024 Pniec update, according to Ecco, does not yet outline a credible oil and gas phase-out strategy and remains misaligned with European objectives.
