Originally published in Environmental Finance
What was interesting was that minister after minister reframed the transition not as an environmental obligation but as a matter of national security. The war in the Middle East, the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, surging energy prices - all of it is landing directly in household bills and government budgets. Spain's minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen called it plainly: a "fossil fuel war." She's not wrong.
Countries aren't just being asked to sacrifice revenue for the climate, they're being shown that fossil fuels carry their own rising price tag, in volatility, geopolitical exposure and eroded energy sovereignty. Security framing alone won't move money, and money is still the problem.
Closing a coal power plant or replacing diesel generation is rarely simple. These assets are woven into contracts, jobs, hospitals and local economies. Tuvalu's climate minister put it directly on day one the conference at Santa Marta: transition must include the most vulnerable countries and unlock finance for them.
This is the gap that carbon markets, designed and governed well, can help fill. Done well, carbon markets do something public finance can't: mobilise private capital to scale projects that have a real impact on people and the planet.
Investment directed to projects that focus on earlier coal power closure, diesel phase-out, renewable replacement — is where carbon markets can deliver the greatest impact. The conditions are non-negotiable:
- finance must support action that wouldn't otherwise happen,
- emissions reductions must be real and verified,
- generation must be replaced with renewables and, most importantly,
- workers and communities must be protected.
Gold Standard has certified emissions reductions across nearly 4,000 projects in over 100 countries, including 27 here in Colombia, supporting the country’s efforts toward a just energy transition and sustainable rural development. Our new JUST methodologies for coal decommissioning and fossil fuel generator phase-out demonstrate how high-integrity carbon markets can support communities and decarbonisation of fossil fuel systems both at a grid-scale and in distributed energy systems.
The remaining challenge is to unlock finance at the scale required to accelerate the transition. One pathway is to build on initiatives such as TRACTION, established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Kinetic Coalition, which aims to aggregate investment into energy transition credits. But progress depends on speed, and on credible, large-scale procurement commitments from companies and governments.
Convened by Colombia in Santa Marta, the conference has helped establish a more practical, implementation-focused platform for international cooperation on fossil fuel phase-out. One that moves the conversation beyond whether to act, and toward how to deliver. The question isn't whether we know how to phase out fossil fuels. We do. The question is whether, following this week’s discussions, we are any closer to making it financeable. That’s the test.