Marisabel García Acelas[1]
Summary
Although the progressive government of Gustavo Petro gave Colombia hope of reaching the social transformations that the broad majorities had demanded in the social uprisings of 2019 and 2021, in practice it has only achieved changes that benefit capital. One of his promises is an Energy Transition for the country; however, the deficits of the current administration’s proposal and bureaucratic and political obstacles have held back this project for change. This article shows how the issue has developed and proposes actions to contribute to an Energy Transition with greater sovereignty and autonomy for the Colombian people.
The project for change and its limits
The progressive government of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez came to power with a proposal for change and profound transformations. The government’s agenda is based on the demands of broad social sectors that played a leading role in recent mobilizations. These sectors have called for access to health, education, decent work, greater participation, and solutions to the country’s economic and social crisis. At the heart of the government’s plan was the expansion of the state’s role in the economy and the recovery of strategic sectors tied to private capital (such as energy). For this reason, the alternative for change that many sectors supported in the elections with high expectations is currently being held back by the limits imposed by capital and the government’s errors in political management.
The tax reform and the National Development Plan were quickly approved because they generated profits for capital, macroeconomic stability in the country, and spending plans that served the interests of the business and banking sectors. This behavior can be explained by the Acuerdo Nacional that brought the Pacto Histórico to power and its proximity to the right-wing parties, which was contingent on the approval of initial measures that would give them ample room for maneuver. The same was not the case with the social reforms aimed at reducing the management of private companies (in the health sector, universities, federations, and professional associations), which sought a transition in the distribution of income and investment. This alternative responded precisely to the aggravation of class contradictions and was quickly stopped.
Education, health, labor, pension, and agrarian reforms are essential to alleviate the hardships of the majorities. However, lobbying in the Congress of the Republic, dominated by the traditional elites, has torpedoed these reforms. To pass the reforms, the government allied with the less radical right-wing parties and called for mass mobilizations to defend the reforms. So far, there have been no mass mobilizations in the streets to support the government’s policies. Another point to analyze is the relationship with organized social movements. This relationship has made progress in promoting progressive policies in education, the environment, land, and labor. However, it has not been able to make a profound and long-term commitment to structural changes that would lead to an alternative future for the country, promoted and legitimized by the majorities. As a result, this oscillating situation leads the national government to constantly call on social movements to defend the changes while at the same time developing policies that do not contradict the interests of capital. This situation gives way to a controlled transition agreed upon with powerful economic groups, deepening the frustration of the majorities who want real changes.
The rightward shift of sectors of the Acuerdo Nacional coalition—the best example of which is the Partido Verde—and the growing rightward shift of local power, which was evident in the results of the elections of governors and mayors held in October 2023, exacerbate this worrying situation. Today, the alliance between the Cambio Radical, Centro Democrático, de la U, and Conservador parties is becoming deeper and broader. It now includes right-wing sectors within the Verde and Liberal parties, whose focus is the 2026 presidential campaign, so they are working tirelessly to undermine the trust that the government has built with the majorities that elected it. They are preparing the pieces for the electoral process.
We argue that the government faces significant obstacles to its continuity in the short-term, primarily caused by the national elites and their economic interests. The national elites have operated as a bloc with the media, the paramilitary action imposed in several regions, the Attorney General’s Office, the Comptroller General’s Office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the high courts (for example, in the tortuous election of the Attorney General of the Nation). This pressure has led the government to increasingly favor closer ties with the owners of capital, as seen in the purchase of land from the Colombian Federation of Cattle Ranchers (Fedegan, for its acronym in Spanish) in the process of land restitution or the awarding of million-dollar contracts to regional clans.
Proposal for an Energy Transition model
One of the main commitments of the national government has been to move towards an Energy Transition (ET) model, with a greater share of public investment and more widespread community management of these resources. However, the projection has exceeded the limits of the market by conditioning the energy problem to a supply-demand relationship, and the debate has escalated around issues of access, participation, democratization, and equity. This ambitious proposal clashed with the limits of its implementation. The model must go beyond its aid-based and local approach to address national energy production in a sovereign and environmentally sustainable manner.
The Energy Transition model created by the government uses public policy to legitimize transformations. Two guiding documents contain the most up-to-date information on this matter: CONPES 4075 (National Planning Department, 2022) and the National Development Plan (Law 2234, 2023). Both documents deal with productive transformation and climate action, emphasizing that users will be able to “generate, commercialize and/or efficiently use energy through the use of non-conventional renewable energy sources (FNCER, for its acronym in Spanish), renewable fuels and distributed energy resources” (Ministry of Mines and Energy, 2023), a novel perspective insofar as the funding would go directly to social organizations.
The guidelines of the national government’s policy proposal could be summarized as follows:
- Actively involve (through direct public financing) small producers, cooperatives, and citizens in the process of generating clean energy, prioritizing the unconnected zones in so-called energy communities, and prioritizing the production of solar energy in La Guajira through a mixed economy model with the Wayúu people, coal workers and communities.
- Create an energy transition fund with resources from oil, coal, and hydroelectric royalties and promote the creation of the National Clean Energy Institute.
- Saving the Amazon rainforest by selling carbon credits and increasing taxes on carbon-intensive products.
- Ecopetrol will guarantee fuel for the next 15 years, promote its contribution to the petrochemical industry, and begin to participate in the production of clean energy. It will also stop the pilot projects for fracking, the exploitation or exploration of offshore deposits, and the suspension of new licenses for oil exploitation, respecting the decisions of the popular consultations.
- Protecting small-scale, ancestral, and artisanal mining and providing it with technical and economic support to advance to higher forms of production that minimize its environmental impact.
However, the level of progress achieved by this proposal is minimal. In general terms, the failures to comply and limits can be summarized as follows:
- Of the 15,489 energy communities that have applied to date, none have started due to the procedures involved in transferring resources and the fulfillment of objectives by the beneficiaries.
- The Energy Transition Fund is not yet operational, and its relationship with the Fund for Non-Conventional Energy and Efficient Energy Management (Fenoge, for its acronym in Spanish), created in 2014 during Juan Manuel Santos’s administration, is not known.
- The Cumbre Agraria, Campesina, Étnica y Popular, a reference point for the coordination of peasant and ethnic social movements in the country, has remained critical of the implementation of carbon credits. It has denounced this mechanism as a form of green capitalism, where few resources remain in countries dedicated to conservation while the industrial powers continue to increase their profits and pollute the planet.
- For Ecopetrol to meet its projections, it will have to technologize and diversify the energy production process. However, the workers organized in the Unión Sindical Obrera have stated that in order to move towards this goal, Ecopetrol must be nationalized, which would mean that the state would buy the shares that were privatized during the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, and that it would advance in the recovery of the most important state exploitation contracts of the most important oil and gas companies in the country. This situation has also not been given the green light.
- Although it is important to support the transition of small-scale, ancestral, and artisanal mining to cleaner forms of production, if they do not have the support of a public-popular company, as proposed by the National Mining Agency, this proposal will not go beyond the aid-based approach of the local federations.
The national government plans to link the social base to its energy transition policy, avoiding resources remaining in the hands of territorial entities or external operators (who would be intermediaries) while positioning its agenda to fight climate change. It intends to involve communities in energy production to meet their own needs through non-conventional renewable energy sources, and if this is achieved, it would certainly impact the decarbonization of the economy, the decentralization of energy production, and the community use of energy resources.
This ET proposal, with a strong local focus, is an important step forward compared to the public policies of previous governments. It becomes a spearhead for the sector, compared to how little social sectors are proposing. However, the proposal is limited in that it does not transform the current concentration of energy in a few companies. It does not dispute the national market or the provision of energy, a collective resource. As a contribution to the discussion, it is relevant to mention two proposals that can contribute to ET in terms of sovereignty and autonomy:
- The country’s energy generation depends on six (6) companies that control 80% of the market, three of which have transnational capital. Therefore, the government must guarantee that public companies completely control the generation of energy so that they allocate their surpluses to guarantee the total coverage of the energy system and research in ET.
- Ecopetrol should cease to be a mixed company and become a 100% state-owned company that, in addition to controlling the production of fossil fuels, manages the generation, transmission, distribution, and selling of energy at the national level, as well as advancing in the production of clean energy.
It is essential to strengthen the most progressive initiatives of the national government with the struggles of the social movement to make decisive progress in the implementation of structural commitments, such as the nationalization of companies in strategic sectors (for example, the energy sector). The oscillating government will have to choose to have the popular bases on its side to achieve public policies that promote real changes; only in this way will the benefits of the projected microeconomic adjustments be put at the service of solving the most felt needs of Colombian society.
References
Banco Mundial. (2022). El Banco Mundial apoya la acción climática en Colombia con un préstamo de US$ 1.000 millones [online]. Banco Mundial. https://www.bancomundial.org/es/news/press-release/2022/12/20/el-banco-mundial-apoya-la-accion-climatica-en-colombia-con-un-prestamo-de-us-1-000-millones
Departamento Administrativo de la Función Pública. (2023). Ley 2294 de 2023. Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (2022-2026): Colombia potencia mundial de la vida [online]. Departamento Administrativo de la Función Pública. https://www.funcionpublica.gov.co/eva/gestornormativo/norma_pdf.php?i=209510
Departamento Nacional de Planeación. (2022). CONPES 4075 del 29 de marzo de 2022: Política de Transición Energética [online]. Departamento Nacional de Planeación. https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Conpes/Econ%C3% B3micos/4075.pdf.
Ministerio de Minas y Energía. (2023). Decreto 2236 de 2023: Política de Transición Energética [online]. Departamento Nacional de Planeación. https://www.suin-juriscol.gov.co/viewDocument.asp?id=30050699.
RTVC Noticias. (2022). Programa de Gobierno: Conoce las propuestas de Petro 2022. https://www.rtvcnoticias.com/programa-de-gobierno-gustavo- petro-pdf
[1] Marisabel García Acelas. Sociologist, with a master’s degree in Latin American Studies, PhD candidate. Research Professor, member of the Centro de Pensamiento y Teoría Crítica PRAXIS.
