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53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout (theconversation.com) 192

Posted by BeauHD from the end-of-oil dept.
Ancient Slashdot reader hwstar shares a report from The Conversation: For the first time ever, more than 50 nations will gather next week in Colombia to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas. The history-making conference was planned before the Iran war. But this year's energy crisis has greatly raised the stakes. [...] Around 80% of the trapped oil was destined for the Asia-Pacific. Faced with dwindling supply, the region's governments are implementing emergency measures such as sending workers home, banning government travel, rationing fuel and cutting school hours. The problem is especially bad in the Pacific. Many island nations use diesel for power generation. In response, leaders declared a regional emergency.

[...] But the real difference from half a century ago is that fossil fuel alternatives are ready for prime time. Since the 1970s, the price of solar panels has fallen 99.9%, while the cost of wind has fallen 91% since 1984. Battery prices have fallen 99% since 1991. [...] This year's oil shock shows signs of creating an unplanned social tipping point -- a threshold for self-propelling change beyond which systems shift from one state to another. Climate scientists warn of climate tipping points which amplify feedback and accelerate warming. But social scientists also point to positive tipping points -- collective action that rapidly accelerates climate action.

[...] The routine burning of coal, oil and gas is the primary driver of the climate crisis. The world's highest court last year made clear nations have obligations to stop burning fossil fuels. But fossil fuels have barely been mentioned in 30 years of global climate negotiations, due in part to blocking efforts by big fossil fuel exporters and lobbyists. Frustrated by slow progress, a coalition of nations has bypassed global climate talks to discuss how to actually phase out fossil fuels. The first of these summits will take place next week. More than 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss a potential standalone treaty to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.

53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout More | Reply

53 Nations Gather To Plan a Fossil Fuel Phaseout

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  • What an obnoxious, empty, corporate word...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I'm not sure why you'd say that. The phrase is almost a hundred years old and has a history going back centuries. It comes from cooking where "hash" means to cut things up into little pieces.

      I like the British version, "thrash out" better though. Especially in a corporate context.

  • There's no list in TFA.

    Will all of them combined even make a dent?

  • Got to delay progress as much as possible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mikeymikec ( 8253876 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @07:59AM (#66108396)
    I wonder how many fossil fuel lobbyists will be present at this conference.

  • How many more MtCO2e cumulatively do we add? (Score:3)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @08:00AM (#66108398)

    That's the key question. How do we keep that number as low as possible.

    Turns out it's not really a question of how quickly to build out storage etc to deal with dunkelflautes. It's really about four things:
    1. How quickly do we electrify ground transport? For example, using scrappage schemes to go faster, not just waiting for market forces
    2. How much will we incentivise electrification of domestic heating? Heat pumps are a pain in the ass to install at national scale, but it's the largest remaining chunk for us to electrify this decade
    3. How quickly do we push industry electrification. The easy stuff is a no brainer (low temp heat, some manufacturing); then there's the scaling-based stuff, eg H2 processes, electrified high temp heat; and then there's the really hard stuff, eg cement
    4. How fast do we go on power. Do we build renewables ahead of demand and curtail and temporary low returns, for example?

    This is the difference between the UK emitting a further 4300 MtCO2e before we get to zero or getting that down to 3000. It can be done, but it is really hard and needs a shit ton of political will.

    Thank fuck for Hormuz and Trump's idiocy, in that sense. 65GW of solar exports from China in March, way more than any previous month.

    • Here's a chart of energy use by fossil fuels [oilandenergyonline.com].

      The big chunks are transportation and electricity generation. Residential heating is a relatively small issue. As heat pump technology improves, people will naturally pick them up.

      • Heat pump technology is fairly mature since it's just a patch on air conditioners. They aren't likely to improve much. People will pick them up as their economic situation improves.

        • Exactly. I'm due to replace my HVAC system in the next year or so. I would go with a heat pump system, but electricity rates are very high in my area. Natural gas is much cheaper. As almost half the year requires my home to be heated or risk being under 30F I'll go with the economic solution over the ecological one. If we can lower electricity rates by then I'll gladly dive in.

          Now if I had the ability to install a ground/air and not air/air heat pump for the same price as my natural gas replacement (or near

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        That’s because that chart shows where emissions are physically produced, rather than where the demand has come from. So building demand for electricity doesn’t show up in the building column, it shows up in the power column. The US uses a lot of air con and has a pretty dirty grid compared to the UK, so that boosts the apparent size of power gen cf buildings. In the US, building decarbonisation is about replacing resistance heating and gas furnaces where used with heat pumps and about grid decar

  • You can't (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

    to manage fossil-fuel phaseout while protecting workers and financial systems.

    You can't protect workers if you persist in thinking of them as "workers", where the idea is they deserve protection because they're working. There's going to be market disruption, and jobs will be destroyed. Even if/when new jobs are created there will be further delay for training if you hope to have those same workers do those new jobs. If not, things are even worse.

    There's obviously going to be intense disruption to financial systems as well, because there's a lot of money in fossil fuels. Whole banks m

  • It's a 20% drop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @08:27AM (#66108434) Homepage
    Closing the Strait of Hormuz drops oil supply by about 20% worldwide. That's the amount that has to either be replaced with production elsewhere (likely Russia) or replaced with alternatives (wind, solar, nuclear, etc.). Nobody is suggesting that we're going to replace 100% of fossil fuels with renewables. For a small island nation that already has diesel generators, this means a large up-front capital investment to build a large amount of solar and/or wind and a large battery bank, but the ongoing costs will be lower than purchasing diesel fuel. Unfortunately capital (the thing you use to build stuff) is expensive right now and looks like it will stay high for a long time, so that makes the initial construction a lot more expensive. Which means less spending on other stuff for those nations, like building industrial plant, schools, roads, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Nobody is suggesting that we're going to replace 100% of fossil fuels with renewables.

      From the article (and the summary):

      ". . . to hash out how to wind down and end their dependence on coal, oil and gas."

      Did you reply to the wrong post? Or just not read it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        End the dependency from is not equal to end the usage of. If you use it, because it is convenient, but can easily switch to something else, it's not dependency.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          What you've just said is that this has nothing to do with climate change or the environment, that it is nothing but virtue signaling and a tax deductible vacation with someone else paying for the hookers and blow.

          I concur.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        Take a note of the countries that were at that conference, and the ones that weren't. The biggest consumers aren't there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          Indeed. And they won't be any time soon, because the biggest consumers are countries with the highest standards of living, and the single most important factor in standard of living is per capita energy usage. The only way to cut emissions using current technology and economic reality is to cut energy usage, and that's not happening in those countries.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by RobinH ( 124750 )
            I'm not sure that's true. You can cut emissions first by just installing solar panels, which is very cheap and offsets a lot of the energy use at peak times (mostly due to AC). You can also make sure you've developed your hydroelectric sites. Then you need to up the nuclear generation, which is nearly zero emissions and can provide base load power. Then you're only left with your variable load, which is typically provided by natural gas. The only zero-emission substitute for that is battery capacity, w

  • Check the dipstick on the PetroDollar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @08:39AM (#66108452)
    It is looking low and really really dirty, time for a change

  • This is a major political shift (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arrogant-Bastard ( 141720 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @08:43AM (#66108456)
    The countries participating in this aren't all traditional allies/partners; this isn't like a meeting of NATO (now 77 years old). This loose coalition of disparate countries was put together in weeks, which is amazingly fast and not now how things normally happen in international politics. That's a reflection of how urgently they all view the situation, and how much they're willing to try to work with each other despite their many differences.

    It's also a big deal that they're (apparently) determined to do this whether or not the traditional superpowers are on board -- notably, the US, which simply cannot be trusted to behave in a responsible manner or even a consistent manner by anyone. I would write "US national policy is erratic" but that understates things badly: the US does not have a national policy because it's been replaced by the day-to-day, hour-to-hour whims and temper tantrums of a pants-shitting mobster.

    I don't know if they'll succeed in building a viable coalition. But they need to succeed because this is an existential crisis for some of them today and it will be for more of them tomorrow. And countries that have their backs to wall have repeatedly demonstrated that they can and will do what it takes: for a recent example, consider Ukraine, which -- out of necessity -- invented a whole new kind of warfare in a matter of months.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Yes, but...
      1) The major polluters are not attending.
      2) Most of these conferences don't yield visible positive results.
      3) When goals are announced, they tend to be ignored in actions.

      I hope they are able to come up with solutions that they can use, but I have doubts that even if they do it will have measurable effects except locally. (Yeah, even local effects are desirable, but don't expect global effects.)

      • This has nothing to do with pollution. They simply can't afford the raising costs, and even if they could they predict a shortage bad enough to wreck things.

        This type of conference is all about what actually needs to be done, which or even if any of the participants can set up manufacturing to supply the needed hardware for the transition, or where they can source that hardware reliably.

        It's desperation about the future loss of the ability to generate power, that has nothing to do with pollution.

  • Donald Trump the Environmentalist (Score:3, Funny)

    by gfordham ( 609304 ) on Thursday April 23, 2026 @08:57AM (#66108466)
    Wow! Causing a fuel crisis is doing more to convert the world to clean energy sources than any accord ever could.

    • Wow! Causing a fuel crisis is doing more to convert the world to clean energy sources than any accord ever could.

      True. Today's low-cost solar panels are direct results of the research programs initiated by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA, later folded into the Department of Energy); programs which were started due to the 1970s oil crisis.

  • You don't need a damn meeting to roll out Thorium reactors, you need big oil to fuck off.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      IIUC, the Thorium reactors are still a "work in progress". And I thought they required a bit of enriched uranium as a starter.

    • You don't need a damn meeting to roll out Thorium reactors, you need big oil to fuck off.

      Big oil is running an aggressive campaign against alternate fuels... but they don't care about nuclear power that much, because their big profits come from oil, and building a nuclear power plant doesn't really impact oil usage.

      What oil companies really wants to stamp out is electric vehicles. Every electric vehicle supplants a vehicle that's burning oil. Keeping in mind that the oil industries are a trillion dollar per year business, so even a one percent decrease in number of gasoline cars represents a lo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        they are also working to stop fuel efficiency standards in ICE cars

        Our state (Washington) is doing more by imposing high sales taxes and license fees on newer (like electric) vehicles.

    • The cost of building and maintaining a nuclear reactor is beyond many nations ability, solar and/or hydroelectric is their only feasable alternative, even a stationary bike modified with a generator would be interesting to look into as not only would people get exercise they can charge up batteries
  • These 50 nations should put their energy towards a technology that replaces fossil fuels. I don't believe there will ever be high speed chargers everywhere there are gas stations today. In Canada, there is no cellphone tower where there is no population. So where we need communication the most, capitalism will not allow it. The same will happen for electric charging. You will be able to travel up north but even if there is a 7 minute to charge technology you won't get it there.

  • It's good to reduce energy dependence on fossil fuel. However, this will serve to make China more powerful since it's the source of the vast majority of the world's solar panels and large batteries.

    I think other countries need to ramp up production of solar panels and batteries so as not to give China even more geopolitical leverage.

  • If we really want to phase out fossil fuels we need nuclear energy. Building only solar and wind guarantees a place on the grid for fossil fuels.
    • Most nations are incapable of building & maintaining a nuclear reactor, it would just make them dependant on big banker's money and foreigners with the skills to maintain and run them until they catch up with the skills, and once they are in debt by billions of dollars to a bank with fiat currency that is a hole they will never get out of but that's what the banker class likes because that means they can enslave the government and the people like the USA is now

      • Most nations aren't responsible for the majority of fossil fuel pollutions.

        And the banker class is what is fucking over new nuclear in the rest of the world as well. 2/3 of the cost of recent builds is interest. That's a solvable problem.

    • Solar, wind, and nuclear energy are all not dispatchable. We need grid storage.

      • Grid storage is extremely expensive. Also slower than building a nuclear baseload. For a solar and wind grid we would need at least 12 hours of storage. That's not going to happen. With a solar, wind and nuclear grid we will need significantly less.

      • If there is enough nuclear plants, 'dispatchable' won't be as big a deal (a thousand people plugging their EVs in on L2 chargers won't sag the system so much).

  • Island nations (Score:3)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday April 23, 2026 @11:43AM (#66108778) Journal

    It is absolutely true -- and completely insane -- that basically all island nations are diesel-powered. Most of these countries have sun like 300 days of the year, and while they don't have a lot of available land, they can and definitely should be covering their rooftops with solar panels. That would not only make them less reliant on fossil fuels, it would also make their electricity dramatically cheaper. They'll still need the diesel generators at night, but power consumption is lower at night and diesel generators are great at load-following.

    I've talked to locals in a half-dozen different island nations about how strange it is that they aren't deploying a lot of solar, given how cheap it is and how much sun they have, and in every case I got the same story: Corruption. Someone associated with government has a monopoly on the import of diesel for power production and arranges for the government to take various actions to block the deployment of solar, even by individuals. The mechanisms vary -- sometimes it's blocking financing, sometimes banning grid-tie inverters, sometimes refusing building permits, etc. -- but the real motivation is very consistent: Maintaining diesel consumption to benefit some wealthy individuals.

    • Just a quick followup: I've also talked to a number of Trump supporters who blithely dismiss his rampant corruption, saying they don't really care because it doesn't affect them. I think they're facially wrong on this, but the impacts are often subtle and indirect. The example of island nation power generation, though, demonstrates what happens if you allow corruption to be endemic: People are paying 50 cents per kWh rather than 10 cents, and the only reason is corruption. And these aren't, by and large

  • With negligible content other than insults (and, presumably, what they'd do at a conference - just like the GOP conferences where grinder has crashed).

    Drive to work? Rather take public transit, which is what I did most of my career. And "shipped by bunker C"... what, you mean all the solar panels and wind turbines?

    Oh, yes... and the petrodollar is going thud.

    Geez, ACs, you really need to up your game.

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