TAGANGA, Colombia – On Colombia's Caribbean coast, a fishing village lies in a cove where green hills meet the turquoise sea.
A few years ago, oil companies found natural gas off the coast and now plan to drill Colombia's deepest gas wells there.
It's been more than a century since Colombia began drilling for petroleum. But the country's president, Gustavo Petro, wants these wells off the coast to be among Colombia's last.
Petro is one of the world's most outspoken leaders on the need for urgent climate action. Key to his administration's climate agenda is transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, the single-biggest driver of global warming.
In 2023, Petro pledged to stop approving new exploration contracts for oil, gas, and coal. On the world stage, this was a big deal. Colombia is the biggest coal producer in South America and one of the region's largest oil producers. Scientists say that to reach global climate targets, some fossil fuel producers will have to leave oil, gas and coal in the ground. Stopping new fossil fuel exploration is a pivotal step.
Now the question is: how is Colombia's energy transition going?
When it comes to growing its renewable energy sector, the country has made progress, says Margarita Nieves Zárate, director of the Colombian Offshore Wind Research Network, a research group. Meanwhile Colombia's government oil company, Ecopetrol, is continuing its multi-year strategy of diversifying away from oil.
But Colombia's energy transition has also faced obstacles - some external, and some of Petro's own making, says Ana Carolina González Espinosa, senior director at the nonprofit Natural Resource Governance Institute. While Colombia has become a global poster child for saying no to fossil fuels, it isn't such a simple story, González Espinosa says.
"I remember the international community, and especially the climate community, clapping," she says. "But maybe they didn't look at all of the challenges that this government would have to overcome."
"It is not a happy story, it is not a sad story, it's just a real story," she says.
Why Colombia is doing this
Many in Colombia's government see the transition away from fossil fuels not just as good for the climate, but as a prudent economic strategy.
Colombia is not a petrostate with extreme reliance on fossil fuels like its neighbor, Venezuela, is. It has manufacturing and tech industries, agriculture, and a growing tourism sector.
But the oil and coal industries are still critical sources of taxes and export revenues. Demand for fossil fuels is expected to fall over time with the global energy transition, and that poses serious risks for the country, according to a study from insurance broker WTW and the Universidad de los Andes. The study found that if Colombia is too slow in transitioning away from fossil fuels it could face lost economic output equivalent to around 27% of its GDP between now and 2050.
Also, Colombia's oil sector isn't very competitive compared to some regional neighbors, says Guy Edwards, who researches Colombia's energy transition at the University of Sussex. He points to Colombia's declining oil reserves, and how – even before Petro pledged not to award new oil and gas exploration contracts – the country wasn't seen as a great place to find oil. A recent oil industry bright spot was the major gas discovery in the Caribbean, but it's deep and expensive to develop.
" If we don't think about how to diversify the economy," González Espinosa says, "then we are going to be in trouble."
Today Colombia's national oil company, Ecopetrol, is diversifying, says Julián Lemos, corporate vice president of strategy and new business at Ecopetrol.
The year before Petro took office, the company acquired an electricity transmission company. In recent years, they've acquired more solar and wind projects. And they're investing in geothermal energy, drilling deep into the earth to create electricity.
"The hydrocarbon business will remain as part of our company," Lemos says, "but we will gradually increase the participation of businesses that are not related to crude oil, such as renewable power, transmission."
"We need to, as a company, be prepared to lead the country in the transformation of our fuel system. And in the transformation of our energy supply matrix."
Renewable progress and failures
A key part of Colombia's transition away from fossil fuels is growing the renewable energy sector. Much of that growth has come from solar, says Andrés Camacho, the former minister of mines and energy under Petro.
Solar made up around 9% of the country's total installed power capacity in 2024, according to data from XM, Colombia's electricity market operator. That's up from roughly 1.5% in 2022.
Petro's government has introduced something called "energy communities," funding solar and battery projects for Colombian communities that lack regular electricity. The government is trying to attract international financing for some of these community-scale renewable projects. And the government recently streamlined the environmental licensing process for solar making it more efficient, says Manuel Schulte, chief executive of Colombian renewable developer Colibri Energy.
But Colombia's renewable energy sector has faced challenges. In some parts of Colombia the grid still isn't big enough to handle many of the new renewable projects. And many of Colombia's big wind, solar and transmission projects are on land belonging to indigenous communities. The government and private sector still haven't done enough to involve indigenous groups in planning, Nieves Zárate, the renewable energy researcher, says.
Struggles with local communities are among the reasons why some foreign investors have given up on renewable projects, particularly wind projects. The national oil company, Ecopetrol, has acquired some of these abandoned wind projects.
Losing the messaging fight
Petro's energy transition policies haven't been popular with many Colombians. According to Susana Muhamad, former environment minister in Petro's cabinet, the government often encountered the "myth," she says, that the country's energy transition "will be an economic hindrance."
" The opposite," Muhamad says. "What we see is that making [an energy transition] that is planned will be economically beneficial."
Edwards says a lot of opposition to Petro's energy transition agenda was stirred up in the Colombian press. His research finds several Colombian newspapers and magazines have mostly framed the pledge not to award new oil and gas contracts as "disastrous for the Colombian economy."
Still, González Espinosa thinks Petro's government fumbled the ball on messaging. She says the government didn't focus enough on the local benefits of the energy transition, like how it will help the Colombian economy, and the health advantages of moving away from fossil fuels.
" They didn't resonate with the national audience," González Espinosa says in an email. "It was all about climate and that argument is not always very easy to sell without connecting it to local realities."
Looking to the future
Petro's term ends in 2026. Looming over next year's election is a question: Will Petro's policies around stopping fossil fuel expansion outlast his administration?
Colombia's president is a vocal opponent of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a type of oil and gas extraction. Many of the presidential candidates have indicated they'll authorize fracking. While Petro's government has put forward legislation in congress to ban fracking, they haven't been able to get it to a vote.
As for Petro's pledge to stop awarding new exploration contracts for oil, gas, and coal, Estefanny Pardo, mining attorney at Holland & Knight, says a right wing government could reverse it.
"The current government has made a mistake, which is that instead of processing everything as a law to be approved by the congress of the republic, they have issued their own decrees and resolutions that could be repealed or changed by the next government," Pardo says in Spanish.
An upcoming conference
Andrés Gómez is Latin America coordinator of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation treaty, an initiative to make a global treaty to phase out fossil fuels. Colombia was one of the first oil-producing countries to join the movement in 2023.
Modeled after treaties to stop nuclear proliferation and landmines, the goal is to create a binding international agreement to stop expanding fossil fuel production.
Next spring, before the country's presidential election, Colombia will host the first international conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels.
If the upcoming conference marks the formal beginning of the treaty-making process, Gómez says in Spanish the incoming Colombian government may still be interested in seeing it through.
"Steps are being taken that have never been taken before."
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