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Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens

133 points by PaulHoule 6mo ago

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
adrianN 6mo ago
We‘ve had talks about this topic decades before I was born, but progress is a bit underwhelming.
- jbmchuck 6mo ago
  Reminds me of this onion bit: https://theonion.com/scientists-politely-remind-world-that-clean-energy-tech-1819576507/ https://theonion.com/scientists-politely-remind-world-that-c...
- leonidasrup 6mo ago
  There is no progress in CO2 reduction, we are still emiting more CO2 each year. " Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by +0.7% within 2025." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4
  - sofixa 6mo ago
    But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.
    - titzer 6mo ago
      Usage going up is not progress.
      - DangitBobby 6mo ago
        Emissions rate of increase slowing is progress in the same way that taking your foot off the gas pedal is progress towards coming to a stop.
        titzer 6mo ago
        But we didn't take our foot off the gas pedal.
    - alephnerd 6mo ago
      > So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made It's too little too late. India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively. And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions. Edit: can't reply The Indian government's "electro-state" transition is predicated on coal expansion [1] - yes at a rate slower than before, but still at a rate that is a net negative for the environment. This is also why India backed out of hosting COP33 in 2028 [2] - it would have brought this inconvenient truth to the forefront [3] [0] - https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/india-withdraws-bid-host-annual-un-climate-talks-2028-2026-04-08/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/india-withdraws-b... [3] - https://www.dw.com/en/why-india-walked-away-from-its-bid-to-host-cop33/a-76778682 https://www.dw.com/en/why-india-walked-away-from-its-bid-to-...
      - alphabeta3r56 6mo ago
        https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 India is taking a shortcut so to say. If climate friendly energy becomes successful in India, it will bbee successful in other countries to. Currently the biggest threat is US forcing people to buy its venezualan and fracking oil.
        kieranmaine 6mo ago
        If you prefer a text and graphs to a video take a look at https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-fast-track-where-china-built-on-coal-india-is-building-on-sun/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-...
        leonidasrup 6mo ago
        Nice video but doesn't estimate when India will reach peak CO2 emission, doesn't estimate when India will reach net zero. Chinese burning of coal for electric power generation decreased, but total coal consumption has increased. In China, coal use is shifting from power production to synthetic fuels and chemicals made from coal, the carbon from synthetic fuels will be emitted as CO2. Will this shift happen also in India? https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/chinas-2026-coal-output-set-slowest-growth-this-decade-despite-lower-imports-2026-02-11/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinese-alchemy-cheap-fuel-powers-coal-to-gas-chemicals-boom-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chines... China is still building new coal power plants, they will be probably used as backup for solar. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-coal-five-year-plan https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-coal-five-year-plan
    - adrianN 6mo ago
      It is a bit sad that we have to celebrate bending the third derivative of the relevant metric in the right direction after like fifty years of talks.
  - adrr 6mo ago
    There are three main sources of green house gases. Top one which is power is declining. Transportation is still growing and the last one is agriculture which is stable. There is progress if you look at the details.
    - leonidasrup 6mo ago
      The most important metric is total emission and we failing at this metric. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/india https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/india https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/indonesia https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/indonesia
- tootie 6mo ago
  Progress has been incredibly rapid. Solar power in particular has gotten exponentially cheaper and more widely deployed. We are in an incredibly deep hole and are aiming at a rapidly moving target (energy demand is growing rapidly due to AI) but we've already hit our first inflection point in terms of renewables making up almost of our added capacity and it's within reach for fossil fuel usage to peak and start falling. Of course, that's still only early milestones since we will continue to add GHGs even as the pace slows. But right now it actually really seems like we have a grip on the problem and are moving in the right direction. It's really not the time to despair, but to double down. https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fossil-electricity-growth-worldwide-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fo...
PKop 6mo ago
[flagged]
- glial 6mo ago
  How so?
  - bdcravens 6mo ago
    A common narrative is that the use of oil is a security guarantee.
  - PKop 6mo ago
    The use of fossil fuels equates directly to higher standard of living, military power, wealth, prosperity, and advanced economies. As well, transportation is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people.
    - mindslight 6mo ago
      Or you focus on doing it where it is economically sensible, rather than being derailed by people who are seemingly triggered by the whole idea.
    - CalRobert 6mo ago
      This was true for exiting horses too at one point. It's not 1975 anymore.
    - cyberax 6mo ago
      Not long ago this was linked to coal and cancer. And even higher rates of cancer and lung disease correlated with higher standards of living. Should we start advocating for the return to coal? Maybe transplanting cancers to cause better prosperity? > "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people. Utter bullshit. Exiting fossil fuels means prosperity for the people in the near future (the next generation). Staying on fossil fuels means stagnation and decay. Don't believe me? I welcome you to visit West Virginia. Or pretty much any former coal-mining region, for that matter. Almost all of them are a depressing sight.
ajross 6mo ago
Absolutely hilarious to me that the biggest catalyst toward global attention to renewables in the last two decades is Trump's ridiculous adventure in the gulf.
- baggy_trough 6mo ago
  Yes, obviously this gas price spike is what climate change activists wanted all along, only not nearly as much as they'd like.
- adrianN 6mo ago
  I would argue that subsidized solar panels and batteries from China are the the most important factor. If renewables weren’t economically competitive we’d see approximately zero deployment.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    Not to forget storage solutions have become viable as well. Generating renewable power is only part of the equation. It has a large variable that needed to be filled for the equation to fully compute waiting for storage.
    - bruce511 6mo ago
      The availability of cheap alternatives to oil is completely part of the solution. Convincing Joe Public to understand yesterday switching to those is in their best interest is also necessary and very hard to do. Mission Acomplished.
  - ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
    Yes but you could argue that one key driving force behind their policies is the knowledge that a Republican president was going to mess up their oil supply sooner or later.
- bruce511 6mo ago
  Yes I came to say the same thing. It's a truism that people don't care about supply till it stops. Interruptions of supply cause people to get antsy. They start looking for alternatives. A drought leads to a surge in well-points and bore holes. Rainwater collection goes up. Electricity outages lead to generators, solar and so on, all easily installed at domestic level. Food shortages lead to more strategic agriculture choices. Oil shortages start to make EVs more attractive. This is the first major interruption in oil supply since the 70s. I start to think the next car I buy will be electric. I already have solar so it makes sense. The biggest way to change society is to make the perception that supply is precarious or expensive. Long after the drought ends, the lessons remain. The leading climate-denier voice , who rails against clean energy, has also caused a world-wide understanding of how precarious our oil supply is. That lesson will stick, regardless of your politics.
AtlasBarfed 6mo ago
Treating alternative energy and PHEVs/EVs as a core national security concern should have started in the early 2000s. Yes, the PV revolution hadn't happened yet, but the hybrid auto was released in 1998 or so, and a PHEV is a natural extension to that. I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s. It's still not too late for ... everyone. In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE. PHEVs will maximize available battery supply to the most electrification of transport. I also think home solar+storage should be heavily subsidized, because you don't need to do nearly as much grid adaptation and, keeping with national security, it makes communities much more disaster resilient if homes are somewhat power independent and they can charge a vehicle for trips.
- mindslight 6mo ago
  "Support our Troops!" (for the young'uns this is a reference to the also-senseless Iraq War, which had a follow on effect of distracting from this issue in favor of solipsistic entitlement and the adoption of SUVs. but looking back wistfully, at least the government and media didn't insult us by not even manufacturing a casus belli)
- cyberax 6mo ago
  > In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE. That's the actual plan for Europe. They are planning to start ICE phase-out by 2035, with only limited exceptions where it's impractical (like long-haul cargo or specialized machinery). I actually don't think that the hybrid timeline could have been accelerated significantly. A lot of foundational technology, such as compact power electronics became accessible only by the early 2000s. Lithium batteries also became commercially viable by then.
scottious 6mo ago
> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just too good at getting them and too motivated to do so.
- MattGrommes 6mo ago
  The point of that comment is not that the talking is happening, it's that the hope of action isn't going to be blocked by industry-captured and plain moronic countries like Saudia Arabia and US, respectively. Even if these countries are a smaller part of the climate affecting processes, any forward motion is good at this point. They can also help build economies of scale, and take advantage of the myriad economic benefits of renewables that other countries are leaving on the table.
  - cmxch 6mo ago
    The US still has enough power to stop it though, thankfully. We aren’t captured by environmental activists that force the poor to shoulder the compliance burden while the rich get to defer and delay.
    - tardedmeme 6mo ago
      Why is it thankful the US has the power to force everyone to keep wasting money on US-controlled energy sources? What's the difference between this situation and a Mafia protection racket?
    - mc32 6mo ago
      Many people don’t realize the IPCC walked back (refined as they put it) some of its most dire scenarios… others may choose to ignore the walkback. Akin to the rocket and feather phenomenon that affects pricing.
jmyeet 6mo ago
I've seen this succintly and accurately described this way: "No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel" [1]. If you think about it, once you build a solar panel, it just produces power for the next 20-30 years. Then you buy another one and replace it. To get oil or natural gas, you need to drill a well. That well requires constant labor. What many don't seem to know is that oil wells decline in production over time. It's called the "decline rate". For the Permian Basin (source of the US shale revolution), the decline rate is 15-20% per year. So a well producing 1000bpd (barrels per day) will be producing ~500bpd in 3 years. That means you have to constantly be drilling new wells. Oil wells (and resource extractors like mines in general) are great wealth concentrators. Solar panels are not. So the point of that quote is that a limited resource creates wealth and is limited but also war is profitable (for the weapons manufacturers) so every incentie lays in continued fossil fuel use because it's constantly minting new billionaires. One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one. To some extent, so is truck freight (although China is busy electrifying this too [2]). There are a lot of non-energy uses too eg plastics, industrial, chemicals, construction. So fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon but we sure could take a leaf out of Chin's commitment to renewable energy [3][4][5]. Instead we get nonsense like warnings to Europe of a dangerous dependency on Chinese clean tech [6]. [1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar-panel/ https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar... [2]: https://prospect.org/2026/04/29/aftermath-china-electrifying-freight-trucking/ https://prospect.org/2026/04/29/aftermath-china-electrifying... [3]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-renewables-to-grid/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-re... [4]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-more-records-with-massive-build-up-of-wind-and-solar-power https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought_on_Ecological_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought_on_Ecologic... [6]: https://renewablesnow.com/news/europe-getting-dangerously-reliant-on-chinese-clean-tech-report-warns-1294100/ https://renewablesnow.com/news/europe-getting-dangerously-re...
- triceratops 6mo ago
  If importing solar panels is a dependency on a foreign power then so is importing oil drills and coal mining equipment. Panels are oil drills, not oil.
mikece 6mo ago
Interesting that Colombia is currently powering more than 70% of their electrical consumption on hydropower. They currently have about 65 TWh of hydropower capacity; the total feasible generation potential is around 200 TWh. Makes then an interesting country to host such talks.
- bluGill 6mo ago
  Good for them, but for most of the world there are no good hydropower locations left. And even when they exist building them is a local ecological disaster.
  - DangitBobby 6mo ago
    Practically everything we do is a local ecological disaster. Pumped storage hydro electricity is one of our least ecologically devastating options and we are not even remotely close to exhausting locations we can put them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
  - timbit42 6mo ago
    Maybe they will have to divert their hydropower funds into solar or wind.
- scythe 6mo ago
  Most of South America has worked like this for decades. Hydropower is king even in Venezuela. It's altruistic on their part, but it may have reduced their long-term economic growth. Viewed in terms of GDP per capita, South America is a laggard. But if you change the denominator and look at GDP per kWh (energy intensity) they are surprisingly close to the rich world. There is a hidden upside to all this hydro: it could potentially be upgraded to pumped storage and support a massive expansion of solar and wind. However, no SA country has such a forward-looking energy policy.
  - hatthew 6mo ago
    Do you have a source for GDP/kWh? Last time I was curious I dumped some raw stats (copied from wikipedia) into excel and venezuela was among the bottom three. I recall being surprised that there wasn't any strong correlation between GDP/kWh and any other obvious metric like technological development, population, land size, climate, etc.
redsocksfan45 6mo ago
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myaccountonhn 6mo ago
This kind of talk frightens me. Not because I don't think its what we need to do, but because then US will find an excuse to invade or interfere.
- VoodooJuJu 6mo ago
  [dead]
- tootie 6mo ago
  That's not really relevant. Even if you look at countries like Norway that have gone all in on EVs and decarbonizing rapidly, they still export oil faster than ever. So long as no one interrupts the global trade of fossil fuels, they don't care.
metalman 6mo ago
internal consumption engines (ICE), are rapidly becoming niche power sources sodium batteries and solar pv, will take over most of the worlds grids quite quickly now, there are no bariers left any country that resists will be left behind and suffer the consequences of uncompetitive costs
- jillesvangurp 6mo ago
  The remaining barriers elsewhere are often policy related. There are many examples across the world where countries are doing very sub optimal things that simply don't make any economical sense. Germany has a lot of industry close to where coal used to be mined that is very energy intensive that is now being powered with expensive gas. Likewise, instead of using electrical heat pumps, most of their buildings still use gas boilers. Worse, they are not even fixing that in new buildings they build. The UK has lots of wind power. But it prices its electricity based on the highest cost generation on the grid, which is usually gas. So, data centers get built close to London because the electricity isn't any cheaper in Scotland where all the clean renewable power is. And since they have too much of that, they actually just curtail it instead of giving a little discount to the locals (or just pricing it negatively and paying them to consume the power). So, like the Germans, the Scots also use gas for heating their houses. Germany has a few million apartment blocks. They pretty much all run on gas. There is no plan to fix that. You might have noticed that gas is really expensive and has to be imported in LNG form as of a few years ago. That's costing many billions per year. Even if they would build gas power plants and converted all those buildings to use electrical heat pumps, it would still save billions in less imported gas (heat pumps are amazingly efficient). And of course they have a lot of frequently curtailed wind power as well. Germany is too busy spending money on gas to fix the problem that they need so much gas. Policy changes could straighten inefficiencies like these out in a relatively short time. But those are controversial because high prices mean high profits for incumbent companies. So governments are dragging their feet and are not doing anything about this. Those big companies are lobbying to protect their profits. And the fossil fuel industry is cheering them along and pitching fantasy schemes about hydrogen to delay their inevitable demise. The public spending on that is insane if you understand how piss poor the economics around hydrogen are. Incentives are completely misaligned, policy prevents a lot of otherwise very rational/economical action, and a lot of that is perpetuated by companies that thrive on the expensive status quo and the politicians they have in their pocket. The current crisis in the Gulf is probably going to accelerate a lot of policy changes by quite a lot. Nothing like a good crisis to force some changes.
adjejmxbdjdn 6mo ago
Maybe Trump isn’t a Putin Manchurian candidate. Maybe he has been installed by the renewable energy sector actually to get the whole world onto renewables as soon as possible. Of course, they had to give up on or delay America’s renewable future, but that may be a small Price to pay, and anyways renewables are growing in the U.S. despite the administration’s frankly insane efforts to block it
- dsign 6mo ago
  Ha! I came here to say something similar. Anyhow, I'm happy that US has found a combative way to combat climate change. I'm also disappointed.
- namuol 6mo ago
  Sure. You know what Putin did the last time oil prices were this high?
readthenotes1 6mo ago
I wonder how many attendees flew in on private jets, much less any transportation relying on carbon-based fuel

133 points by PaulHoule 6mo ago

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

adrianN 6mo ago

We‘ve had talks about this topic decades before I was born, but progress is a bit underwhelming.

jbmchuck 6mo ago
Reminds me of this onion bit: https://theonion.com/scientists-politely-remind-world-that-clean-energy-tech-1819576507/ https://theonion.com/scientists-politely-remind-world-that-c...
leonidasrup 6mo ago
There is no progress in CO2 reduction, we are still emiting more CO2 each year. " Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by +0.7% within 2025." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4
- sofixa 6mo ago
  But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.
  - titzer 6mo ago
    Usage going up is not progress.
    - DangitBobby 6mo ago
      Emissions rate of increase slowing is progress in the same way that taking your foot off the gas pedal is progress towards coming to a stop.
      - titzer 6mo ago
        But we didn't take our foot off the gas pedal.
  - alephnerd 6mo ago
    > So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made It's too little too late. India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively. And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions. Edit: can't reply The Indian government's "electro-state" transition is predicated on coal expansion [1] - yes at a rate slower than before, but still at a rate that is a net negative for the environment. This is also why India backed out of hosting COP33 in 2028 [2] - it would have brought this inconvenient truth to the forefront [3] [0] - https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by... [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mulls-extending-coal-power-expansion-for-another-12-years https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul... [2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/india-withdraws-bid-host-annual-un-climate-talks-2028-2026-04-08/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/india-withdraws-b... [3] - https://www.dw.com/en/why-india-walked-away-from-its-bid-to-host-cop33/a-76778682 https://www.dw.com/en/why-india-walked-away-from-its-bid-to-...
    - alphabeta3r56 6mo ago
      https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=BPqR9jy6C3U&is=PFRfRJ23MXSFnRV4 India is taking a shortcut so to say. If climate friendly energy becomes successful in India, it will bbee successful in other countries to. Currently the biggest threat is US forcing people to buy its venezualan and fracking oil.
      - kieranmaine 6mo ago
        If you prefer a text and graphs to a video take a look at https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-fast-track-where-china-built-on-coal-india-is-building-on-sun/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/indias-electrotech-...
      - leonidasrup 6mo ago
        Nice video but doesn't estimate when India will reach peak CO2 emission, doesn't estimate when India will reach net zero. Chinese burning of coal for electric power generation decreased, but total coal consumption has increased. In China, coal use is shifting from power production to synthetic fuels and chemicals made from coal, the carbon from synthetic fuels will be emitted as CO2. Will this shift happen also in India? https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-china-and-india-for-first-time-in-52-years-after-clean-energy-records/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/chinas-2026-coal-output-set-slowest-growth-this-decade-despite-lower-imports-2026-02-11/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chinese-alchemy-cheap-fuel-powers-coal-to-gas-chemicals-boom-2025-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chines... China is still building new coal power plants, they will be probably used as backup for solar. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-coal-five-year-plan https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-coal-five-year-plan
  - adrianN 6mo ago
    It is a bit sad that we have to celebrate bending the third derivative of the relevant metric in the right direction after like fifty years of talks.
- adrr 6mo ago
  There are three main sources of green house gases. Top one which is power is declining. Transportation is still growing and the last one is agriculture which is stable. There is progress if you look at the details.
  - leonidasrup 6mo ago
    The most important metric is total emission and we failing at this metric. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/india https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/india https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/china https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/indonesia https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/indonesia
tootie 6mo ago
Progress has been incredibly rapid. Solar power in particular has gotten exponentially cheaper and more widely deployed. We are in an incredibly deep hole and are aiming at a rapidly moving target (energy demand is growing rapidly due to AI) but we've already hit our first inflection point in terms of renewables making up almost of our added capacity and it's within reach for fossil fuel usage to peak and start falling. Of course, that's still only early milestones since we will continue to add GHGs even as the pace slows. But right now it actually really seems like we have a grip on the problem and are moving in the right direction. It's really not the time to despair, but to double down. https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fossil-electricity-growth-worldwide-in-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fo...

PKop 6mo ago

[flagged]

glial 6mo ago
How so?
- bdcravens 6mo ago
  A common narrative is that the use of oil is a security guarantee.
- PKop 6mo ago
  The use of fossil fuels equates directly to higher standard of living, military power, wealth, prosperity, and advanced economies. As well, transportation is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people.
  - mindslight 6mo ago
    Or you focus on doing it where it is economically sensible, rather than being derailed by people who are seemingly triggered by the whole idea.
  - CalRobert 6mo ago
    This was true for exiting horses too at one point. It's not 1975 anymore.
  - cyberax 6mo ago
    Not long ago this was linked to coal and cancer. And even higher rates of cancer and lung disease correlated with higher standards of living. Should we start advocating for the return to coal? Maybe transplanting cancers to cause better prosperity? > "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people. Utter bullshit. Exiting fossil fuels means prosperity for the people in the near future (the next generation). Staying on fossil fuels means stagnation and decay. Don't believe me? I welcome you to visit West Virginia. Or pretty much any former coal-mining region, for that matter. Almost all of them are a depressing sight.

ajross 6mo ago

Absolutely hilarious to me that the biggest catalyst toward global attention to renewables in the last two decades is Trump's ridiculous adventure in the gulf.

baggy_trough 6mo ago
Yes, obviously this gas price spike is what climate change activists wanted all along, only not nearly as much as they'd like.
adrianN 6mo ago
I would argue that subsidized solar panels and batteries from China are the the most important factor. If renewables weren’t economically competitive we’d see approximately zero deployment.
- dylan604 6mo ago
  Not to forget storage solutions have become viable as well. Generating renewable power is only part of the equation. It has a large variable that needed to be filled for the equation to fully compute waiting for storage.
  - bruce511 6mo ago
    The availability of cheap alternatives to oil is completely part of the solution. Convincing Joe Public to understand yesterday switching to those is in their best interest is also necessary and very hard to do. Mission Acomplished.
- ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
  Yes but you could argue that one key driving force behind their policies is the knowledge that a Republican president was going to mess up their oil supply sooner or later.
bruce511 6mo ago
Yes I came to say the same thing. It's a truism that people don't care about supply till it stops. Interruptions of supply cause people to get antsy. They start looking for alternatives. A drought leads to a surge in well-points and bore holes. Rainwater collection goes up. Electricity outages lead to generators, solar and so on, all easily installed at domestic level. Food shortages lead to more strategic agriculture choices. Oil shortages start to make EVs more attractive. This is the first major interruption in oil supply since the 70s. I start to think the next car I buy will be electric. I already have solar so it makes sense. The biggest way to change society is to make the perception that supply is precarious or expensive. Long after the drought ends, the lessons remain. The leading climate-denier voice , who rails against clean energy, has also caused a world-wide understanding of how precarious our oil supply is. That lesson will stick, regardless of your politics.

AtlasBarfed 6mo ago

Treating alternative energy and PHEVs/EVs as a core national security concern should have started in the early 2000s. Yes, the PV revolution hadn't happened yet, but the hybrid auto was released in 1998 or so, and a PHEV is a natural extension to that. I'm weak on recollection as to when PV and wind started their big price plummet, but it was certainly in the 2010s. It's still not too late for ... everyone. In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE. PHEVs will maximize available battery supply to the most electrification of transport. I also think home solar+storage should be heavily subsidized, because you don't need to do nearly as much grid adaptation and, keeping with national security, it makes communities much more disaster resilient if homes are somewhat power independent and they can charge a vehicle for trips.

mindslight 6mo ago
"Support our Troops!" (for the young'uns this is a reference to the also-senseless Iraq War, which had a follow on effect of distracting from this issue in favor of solipsistic entitlement and the adoption of SUVs. but looking back wistfully, at least the government and media didn't insult us by not even manufacturing a casus belli)
cyberax 6mo ago
> In particular, I think PHEVs should be an regulated requirement for all consumer (and probably semis, why aren't they hybrids yet just so they can have better acceleration/torque and regen braking) vehicles in ten years, with a 10-year decreasing subsidy for PHEV and a 10-year increasing penalty for car registration and new car purchases of pure ICE. That's the actual plan for Europe. They are planning to start ICE phase-out by 2035, with only limited exceptions where it's impractical (like long-haul cargo or specialized machinery). I actually don't think that the hybrid timeline could have been accelerated significantly. A lot of foundational technology, such as compact power electronics became accessible only by the early 2000s. Lithium batteries also became commercially viable by then.

scottious 6mo ago

> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just too good at getting them and too motivated to do so.

MattGrommes 6mo ago
The point of that comment is not that the talking is happening, it's that the hope of action isn't going to be blocked by industry-captured and plain moronic countries like Saudia Arabia and US, respectively. Even if these countries are a smaller part of the climate affecting processes, any forward motion is good at this point. They can also help build economies of scale, and take advantage of the myriad economic benefits of renewables that other countries are leaving on the table.
- cmxch 6mo ago
  The US still has enough power to stop it though, thankfully. We aren’t captured by environmental activists that force the poor to shoulder the compliance burden while the rich get to defer and delay.
  - tardedmeme 6mo ago
    Why is it thankful the US has the power to force everyone to keep wasting money on US-controlled energy sources? What's the difference between this situation and a Mafia protection racket?
  - mc32 6mo ago
    Many people don’t realize the IPCC walked back (refined as they put it) some of its most dire scenarios… others may choose to ignore the walkback. Akin to the rocket and feather phenomenon that affects pricing.

jmyeet 6mo ago

I've seen this succintly and accurately described this way: "No One Goes to War Over a Solar Panel" [1]. If you think about it, once you build a solar panel, it just produces power for the next 20-30 years. Then you buy another one and replace it. To get oil or natural gas, you need to drill a well. That well requires constant labor. What many don't seem to know is that oil wells decline in production over time. It's called the "decline rate". For the Permian Basin (source of the US shale revolution), the decline rate is 15-20% per year. So a well producing 1000bpd (barrels per day) will be producing ~500bpd in 3 years. That means you have to constantly be drilling new wells. Oil wells (and resource extractors like mines in general) are great wealth concentrators. Solar panels are not. So the point of that quote is that a limited resource creates wealth and is limited but also war is profitable (for the weapons manufacturers) so every incentie lays in continued fossil fuel use because it's constantly minting new billionaires. One thing I'll add here is that there are a lot of energy usages for fossil fuels for which we have no alternative. Aviation is a big one. To some extent, so is truck freight (although China is busy electrifying this too [2]). There are a lot of non-energy uses too eg plastics, industrial, chemicals, construction. So fossil fuels aren't going away anytime soon but we sure could take a leaf out of Chin's commitment to renewable energy [3][4][5]. Instead we get nonsense like warnings to Europe of a dangerous dependency on Chinese clean tech [6]. [1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar-panel/ https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar... [2]: https://prospect.org/2026/04/29/aftermath-china-electrifying-freight-trucking/ https://prospect.org/2026/04/29/aftermath-china-electrifying... [3]: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-renewables-to-grid/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/12/china-adding-more-re... [4]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-more-records-with-massive-build-up-of-wind-and-solar-power https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-breaks-m... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought_on_Ecological_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping_Thought_on_Ecologic... [6]: https://renewablesnow.com/news/europe-getting-dangerously-reliant-on-chinese-clean-tech-report-warns-1294100/ https://renewablesnow.com/news/europe-getting-dangerously-re...

triceratops 6mo ago
If importing solar panels is a dependency on a foreign power then so is importing oil drills and coal mining equipment. Panels are oil drills, not oil.

mikece 6mo ago

Interesting that Colombia is currently powering more than 70% of their electrical consumption on hydropower. They currently have about 65 TWh of hydropower capacity; the total feasible generation potential is around 200 TWh. Makes then an interesting country to host such talks.

bluGill 6mo ago
Good for them, but for most of the world there are no good hydropower locations left. And even when they exist building them is a local ecological disaster.
- DangitBobby 6mo ago
  Practically everything we do is a local ecological disaster. Pumped storage hydro electricity is one of our least ecologically devastating options and we are not even remotely close to exhausting locations we can put them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
- timbit42 6mo ago
  Maybe they will have to divert their hydropower funds into solar or wind.
scythe 6mo ago
Most of South America has worked like this for decades. Hydropower is king even in Venezuela. It's altruistic on their part, but it may have reduced their long-term economic growth. Viewed in terms of GDP per capita, South America is a laggard. But if you change the denominator and look at GDP per kWh (energy intensity) they are surprisingly close to the rich world. There is a hidden upside to all this hydro: it could potentially be upgraded to pumped storage and support a massive expansion of solar and wind. However, no SA country has such a forward-looking energy policy.
- hatthew 6mo ago
  Do you have a source for GDP/kWh? Last time I was curious I dumped some raw stats (copied from wikipedia) into excel and venezuela was among the bottom three. I recall being surprised that there wasn't any strong correlation between GDP/kWh and any other obvious metric like technological development, population, land size, climate, etc.

redsocksfan45 6mo ago

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myaccountonhn 6mo ago

This kind of talk frightens me. Not because I don't think its what we need to do, but because then US will find an excuse to invade or interfere.

VoodooJuJu 6mo ago
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tootie 6mo ago
That's not really relevant. Even if you look at countries like Norway that have gone all in on EVs and decarbonizing rapidly, they still export oil faster than ever. So long as no one interrupts the global trade of fossil fuels, they don't care.

metalman 6mo ago

internal consumption engines (ICE), are rapidly becoming niche power sources sodium batteries and solar pv, will take over most of the worlds grids quite quickly now, there are no bariers left any country that resists will be left behind and suffer the consequences of uncompetitive costs

jillesvangurp 6mo ago
The remaining barriers elsewhere are often policy related. There are many examples across the world where countries are doing very sub optimal things that simply don't make any economical sense. Germany has a lot of industry close to where coal used to be mined that is very energy intensive that is now being powered with expensive gas. Likewise, instead of using electrical heat pumps, most of their buildings still use gas boilers. Worse, they are not even fixing that in new buildings they build. The UK has lots of wind power. But it prices its electricity based on the highest cost generation on the grid, which is usually gas. So, data centers get built close to London because the electricity isn't any cheaper in Scotland where all the clean renewable power is. And since they have too much of that, they actually just curtail it instead of giving a little discount to the locals (or just pricing it negatively and paying them to consume the power). So, like the Germans, the Scots also use gas for heating their houses. Germany has a few million apartment blocks. They pretty much all run on gas. There is no plan to fix that. You might have noticed that gas is really expensive and has to be imported in LNG form as of a few years ago. That's costing many billions per year. Even if they would build gas power plants and converted all those buildings to use electrical heat pumps, it would still save billions in less imported gas (heat pumps are amazingly efficient). And of course they have a lot of frequently curtailed wind power as well. Germany is too busy spending money on gas to fix the problem that they need so much gas. Policy changes could straighten inefficiencies like these out in a relatively short time. But those are controversial because high prices mean high profits for incumbent companies. So governments are dragging their feet and are not doing anything about this. Those big companies are lobbying to protect their profits. And the fossil fuel industry is cheering them along and pitching fantasy schemes about hydrogen to delay their inevitable demise. The public spending on that is insane if you understand how piss poor the economics around hydrogen are. Incentives are completely misaligned, policy prevents a lot of otherwise very rational/economical action, and a lot of that is perpetuated by companies that thrive on the expensive status quo and the politicians they have in their pocket. The current crisis in the Gulf is probably going to accelerate a lot of policy changes by quite a lot. Nothing like a good crisis to force some changes.

adjejmxbdjdn 6mo ago

Maybe Trump isn’t a Putin Manchurian candidate. Maybe he has been installed by the renewable energy sector actually to get the whole world onto renewables as soon as possible. Of course, they had to give up on or delay America’s renewable future, but that may be a small Price to pay, and anyways renewables are growing in the U.S. despite the administration’s frankly insane efforts to block it

dsign 6mo ago
Ha! I came here to say something similar. Anyhow, I'm happy that US has found a combative way to combat climate change. I'm also disappointed.
namuol 6mo ago
Sure. You know what Putin did the last time oil prices were this high?

readthenotes1 6mo ago

I wonder how many attendees flew in on private jets, much less any transportation relying on carbon-based fuel