In Santa Marta, Colombia, roughly 50 nations have gathered under the banner of a "coalition of the willing" to confront one of the most politically fraught questions in climate policy: whether to halt all new fossil fuel expansion. The summit, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, is designed as a more focused alternative to the sprawling UN climate negotiations, where consensus requirements have repeatedly diluted ambition. It follows an impasse at COP30 in Brazil, where efforts to formalize a global phaseout roadmap failed to secure universal agreement.

Ahead of the diplomatic discussions, a synthesis report authored by an international group of academics has drawn a hard line. According to documents seen by Carbon Brief, the scientists recommend an immediate cessation of all new oil and gas projects. The report explicitly rejects the characterization of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" — a framing that has long provided political cover for continued investment in gas infrastructure — and calls instead for a direct transition to electrification and renewable energy sources.

The Bridge Fuel Question

The notion that natural gas can serve as a transitional energy source has been a fixture of climate diplomacy for more than a decade. The argument rests on the fact that burning gas produces roughly half the carbon dioxide of coal per unit of energy, making it appear cleaner by comparison. But the framing has come under sustained scrutiny. Methane — the primary component of natural gas — is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over shorter time horizons, and leakage across the extraction, transport, and distribution chain has proven difficult to contain. Studies published in recent years have progressively narrowed the window in which new gas infrastructure could be considered compatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The Santa Marta report appears to treat that window as effectively closed. By advising governments to reject gas as a transitional solution, the scientists are challenging not only an energy strategy but an entire political economy. Gas projects typically involve long-lived infrastructure — pipelines, liquefaction terminals, power plants — with investment horizons stretching decades into the future. Halting new expansion would force a reckoning with the financial commitments already embedded in national energy plans across both producing and consuming nations.

Beyond Production: Subsidies, Advertising, and Domestic Policy

The report's twelve "action insights" extend well beyond the question of supply. Among the recommendations are the elimination of both production and consumption subsidies for fossil fuels and the creation of legal frameworks to ban fossil fuel advertising. These proposals echo a pattern seen in public health regulation — most notably the restrictions placed on tobacco marketing over the past several decades — where governments moved to curtail demand-side signals alongside supply-side controls.

Fossil fuel subsidies remain deeply entrenched in fiscal policy worldwide. Removing them is politically treacherous: subsidies often function as implicit social contracts, keeping energy prices low for consumers and supporting employment in extraction-dependent regions. The advertising question, while less economically consequential in direct terms, carries symbolic weight. Several European jurisdictions have already moved to restrict or ban fossil fuel advertising, but no binding international framework exists.

The Santa Marta summit operates outside the formal UN negotiating architecture, which means any agreements reached there carry no binding force under international law. That is both its limitation and its potential advantage. Smaller coalitions can move faster and signal intent more clearly, even if implementation depends entirely on domestic political will. The history of climate diplomacy offers precedents in both directions: the High Ambition Coalition that helped broker the Paris Agreement in 2015 demonstrated that smaller blocs can shape larger outcomes, while numerous voluntary pledges — on deforestation, methane, coal — have struggled to translate into measurable reductions.

What remains to be seen is whether the Santa Marta coalition can convert scientific recommendation into coordinated policy action, or whether the report's hard line will soften under the gravitational pull of economic interests and energy security concerns. The tension between the scientific case for an immediate halt and the political reality of fossil fuel dependence is not new. What is new is the venue: a summit explicitly designed to operate outside the constraints of universal consensus, testing whether a willing minority can move faster than the whole.

With reporting from Carbon Brief.

Source · Carbon Brief