Irene Vélez Torres is the former Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development (2025-2026) and former Minister of Mines and Energy (2022-2023) of Colombia. Hon. Ralph Regenvanu is Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change, Adaptation, Meteorology and Geo-Hazards, and Energy.

Governments will gather next week in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, this year’s United Nations climate summit. Three years ago, at the same summit in Dubai, nearly every country on Earth agreed, for the first time, to work toward transitioning energy systems away from fossil fuels.

There is still no agreement on how to do it or where to start. One of us governed a fossil fuel producing-country in the Amazon; the other serves a Pacific Island state that has never extracted a barrel of oil. We have both tried to answer that question from inside our governments, and we want to share what we learned with the ministers who will try next.

Fossil-free zones are an ambitious step

Neither of our countries is rich. In 2024, fossil fuels still met more than three-quarters of Colombia’s energy demand, and coal and oil revenue help pay for schools and hospitals. In Vanuatu, children in Port Vila are still studying in tents three years after the last cyclone destroyed their classrooms.

We both took on the just transition challenge from vulnerable positions, with little support from the countries that bear the responsibility to act first and fastest. Still, we chose to lead with ambition.

This year’s events have made the case to phase out fossil fuels even clearer. When the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed in February, the world suffered what the head of the International Energy Agency called the largest energy supply shock in history.

The resultant energy crisis is what pushed countries in Santa Marta, 57 total countries representing nearly half the world’s GDP and approximately 20% of the global fossil fuel supply, to work toward a managed, equitable, and just transition away from fossil fuels.

The ongoing global energy shock has laid bare the limitations of our current system and that the persistent reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable, for both people and planet.

In this vein, we have been clear on our stance that a healthy forest and a healthy ocean are not assets waiting to be drilled. That is why we have advocated strongly for Fossil Free Zones, or protected places where a government decides that oil, gas, and coal will never be extracted because what lives there is worth more left intact. It turns a vague global promise made in Dubai into a concrete line on the ground, or on the sea.

Lessons from Colombia and the Pacific

Colombia’s lesson: start where the numbers are clearest. In August, Colombia declared nearly 500,000 square kilometers of the Amazon, roughly 42 percent of the country, permanently closed to new mining, oil, and gas. It is the largest terrestrial Fossil Free Zone on the planet.

Earth Insight found that drilling there would create billions of dollars in stranded assets while doing almost nothing for energy security. The decision was built with Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and campesinos, and backed by the largest investment in the region’s history in forest-based economies. A decision made with communities, rather than for them, grows deep roots.

Vanuatu’s lesson: replace the fuel, not just refuse to drill. From Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands in the west to Hawaii in the east, no fossil fuels are extracted, though vast reserves may lie beneath the seabed and pressures from industry destroy that grow.

However, Pacific nations do not want to dig them up, and making renewables the cheapest option, and securing the political commitments to protect these areas, means they will never have to. Vanuatu aims for 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and is on track to meet this goal in nearly every sector. Across its islands, small solar and hydro systems are built with public funds, run by local businesses, and welcomed by communities.

The shared lesson: small countries scale together. Pacific leaders have agreed to pool their efforts on renewable energy across the region. In April, Pacific Climate Ministers adopted the Tassiriki Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. At the Santa Marta Conference, they proposed the world’s first fossil fuel-free marine zone, an ambition we will carry to the Second Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Tuvalu next July.

Building momentum to move past challenges

We will be honest about the risks. Colombia’s new government has pledged to revive oil and gas exploration, and a ministerial resolution is relatively easy to overturn. Indeed, extractive interests have already driven the incoming government to revoke this protection just two months after taking office.

That is why this cannot remain the experiment of a few countries. Vanuatu has championed a “multilateralism from the margins,” which is how it won the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion confirming that granting fossil fuel licenses can breach states’ legal obligations to protect the climate system. Decisions like ours endure when others make them too. Mexico and Guatemala have already walked similar paths, but more need to follow.

COP31 is the moment for more countries to join in these commitments, providing pathways toward the change we need. Any government can advance its transition away from fossil fuels by creating a Fossil Free Zone with tools it already holds: protected areas, Indigenous land titles, land and ocean planning, and energy licensing rules.

The just transition will reshape our forests and oceans either way. The only question is whether nature guides it or pays the price. Colombia and the Pacific Islands have drawn our lines. At COP31, we hope others will draw theirs.

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Governments must embrace Fossil-Free Zones as they head to COP31

China’s rapidly-expanding clean energy generation and deepening electrification has made the country more resilient to energy shocks, bolstering its position ahead of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye, where speeding up the world’s electrification is set to dominate.

The growth of China’s renewable energy capacity protected it from the economic fallout from the energy crisis triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) published on Thursday.

As oil and gas stopped flowing through the key fossil fuel trade route, leading prices to soar, China’s crude oil imports – the largest in the world – fell sharply, leading the country to start drawing down on its reserves and curbing its exports of petroleum products.

“Yet, the import reduction did not produce the economic and social disruption in China one might normally expect from a shock of this scale,” the report found.

As temporary adjustment cushioned the oil-import shock, clean power and the electrification of the transport sector buffered the economic costs.

The rise of renewable energy and nuclear power have reduced China’s fossil fuel imports bill by more than $9 billion since 2020, more than any other country, according to CREA.

“China remains exposed to imported fuels, particularly where oil is used as a chemical feedstock, but reducing fossil-fuel demand already contributes to energy security,” said Qi Qin, the report’s author.

The view from Beijing: vindicated

CREA’s analysis found the roll-out of electric vehicles (EVs) displaced 38 million tonnes of oil equivalent between March and August, equivalent to around 13% of China’s crude oil imports in the same period the previous year.

China’s ongoing reliance on coal-fired power plants also protected the country against oil and gas supply disruptions, although coal power generation remained broadly flat in the six months since the start of the Iran war, according to the report.

Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Climate home News that China’s all-of-the-above approach to energy development has provided the country with the strategic flexibility to face the oil shock.

“While China has often been criticised in previous years for moving too slowly away from coal, this year’s global energy market volatility has given Chinese policymakers a renewed sense of confidence. There is a growing sentiment in Beijing that recent events have vindicated China’s energy strategy as both prudent and pragmatic,” he said.

Can China support the electrification pledge?

Despite its vast cleantech build-out and rapid electrification boosting its energy resilience, China has stopped short of endorsing an initiative by COP31 host Türkiye to increase the global share of electricity to 35% in final energy use by 2035.

Li Gao, vice minister at the Ministry of ​Ecology and Environment, who will lead the Chinese delegation at COP31, told a press conference the electrification target was in line with Chinese policy. “We believe that increasing electrification levels will help promote a green and low-carbon energy transition and address climate change,” he said.

China’s position on the electrification initiative is one of the major questions hanging over the COP31 talks beginning in Antalya next week.

“What is clear is that China has the most to gain from accelerated electrification because of their manufacturing capabilities,” said Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance.

In 2026 alone, China’s exports of solar panels, batteries, EV and other cleantech are on track to avoid emissions equivalent to Brazil’s annual emissions.

Türkiye’s proposal doesn’t include a commitment to produce the power from clean energy, nor does it explicitly link electrification to the transition away from fossil fuels – issues on which the EU has signalled it is ready to push back.  

But Chinese analysts say Beijing is unlikely to support linking a global electrification goal to commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.

Former French climate envoy Laurence Tubiana, the outgoing CEO of the European Climate Foundation, told Climate Home News that the EU and developed countries such as Brazil – which is influential within the BRICS group of large emerging economies – have a responsibility to push China to show leadership in the talks.

Driving the world’s electrification

The electrification of the Chinese economy has outpaced that of any other major economy.

In the US and the EU, the share of electrification has stagnated just above 20%. In China, it has doubled since 2005, reaching close to 30% in 2025.  

The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects China will remain the single largest driver of global electricity demand growth through to 2030, as it electrifies its manufacturing sector as well as growing demand for cooling and EV charging.

Over the next five years, the IEA forecasts that China will increase its electricity consumption by as much as the total electricity consumption of the EU today.

In August, the Chinese government set a target to boost the share of electricity in its final energy consumption to 35% by 2030 – five years ahead of Türkiye’s proposed goal.

From laggard to frontrunner

Clean-power growth and electrification could meet all of China’s rising power demand, according to CREA. By 2030, this would mean renewable and nuclear energy could reach 54% of power generation – exceeding China’s target to generate half its electricity from non-fossil sources by the end of the decade.

Clean electricity already met all of China’s demand growth in 2025. “The challenge lies in sustaining such growth over several years,” said Qin.

From Beijing’s perspective, the global targets such as the electrification pledge “no longer appear particularly ambitious or threatening”, said Li, of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

“China, long perceived as a climate laggard, is increasingly moving ahead of countries in the Global North. A global ceiling target is increasingly only a floor for China,” he emphasised.

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Clean power shields China from oil shock more than any other country