Join ClientEarth, Carbon Tracker and a panel of experts for an energising morning discussion during London Climate Action Week.

From the Strait of Hormuz to the North Sea, oil and gas markets are shaped by chokepoints. Some are physical; others are legal, regulatory and financial.  

Amid shifting market dynamics and significant legal developments, this event will explore the complex and changing path through which oil and gas projects are approved, financed, and retired in the UK.  

As policymakers balance energy security with a commitment not to issue new exploration licences in the declining North Sea basin, and as legal requirements tighten around project consent and asset retirement, the discussion will examine whether current capital raising rules are fit for purpose. 

ClientEarth and Carbon Tracker will also launch a pivotal new report, testing whether fossil reserves valuations are matching changes in the legal landscape, or leaving investors blind to climate-related risk. 

Bringing together leading voices from law, finance, academia and civil society, the expert panel will explore structural pressure points across the oil and gas lifecycle. And lay out the context for further action. 

This is an in-person event at the Inner Temple in London. If you are unable to attend in person and would like to join remotely please email events@clientearth.org to request a Zoom link. Thank you! 

The post Disruption on the horizon: consent, capital and clean-up in the oil and gas sector appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

This webinar cuts through the hype, using market data, policy analysis, and lifecycle evidence to assess the true scale, cost, and sustainability of alternative jet fuels. The goal is not to dismiss them, but to recalibrate expectations, challenge overreliance, and position alternative fuels as one tool among many in aviation’s transition.

What you’ll leave with:

• A clear understanding of why truly sustainable fuels face structural limits.
• Insight into where alternative fuel investment makes sense—and where it doesn’t.
• A stronger basis for allocating capital and policy across aviation decarbonisation options.

The post Fuel Disclosure appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

London, 20 April, 2026 – Colombia’s continued reliance on internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles is creating long-term economic liabilities and increasing exposure to imported refined fuels, according to a new report from Carbon Tracker. Transport accounted for 75% of Colombia’s oil consumption in 2023, with over 25% imported. Under a business-as-usual pathway, Colombia could spend up to US$226bn on fuel import for road transport through to 2050.

By contrast, an accelerated transition to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) would avoid 600 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) in fossil fuel use through to 2050 and deliver around US$40 billion in fuel import savings.

The report argues that continued ICE vehicle sales lock Colombia into decades of higher fuel demand, health costs and climate-related economic damage. Carbon Tracker estimates that every new petrol and diesel vehicle sold today adds substantial lifetime costs: nearly US$6k per passenger car, US$120k per medium-duty truck, US$278k per heavy-duty truck and US$350k per bus.

The analysis also points to the pressure on public finances. Carbon Tracker estimates fossil fuel subsidies at around US$6.8bn in 2025, compared with US$6.3bn in government revenues from fossil fuel sales, leaving a shortfall of US$0.5bn.

At the same time, the report finds that the global automotive market is shifting rapidly in ways that de-risk BEV adoption. China’s manufacturing expansion has helped cut battery costs by more than 80% since 2013, while expanding model availability and strengthening supply chains. For emerging economies such as Colombia, this is improving access to lower-cost electric mobility.

Carbon Tracker argues that Colombia is well placed to move faster in BEV adoption. The report highlights three key advantages: a relatively low (car ownership per capita), an electricity system primarily (72%) dependenton (clean) hydropower, and limited exposure to legacy domestic automotive manufacturing. Electricity also remains cheaper than petrol or diesel for road transport, lowering the lifetime ownership cost of BEVs compared to ICE cars for consumers.

Alongside the economic case, the report finds that an accelerated BEV transition could generate health cost savings from lower levels of harmful air pollution. It also estimates that lower vehicle fleet emissions could avoid up to c US$35bn (present value) in climate-related economic damages through to 2050.

Ben Scott, report author and Head of Energy Demand at Carbon Tracker, said:

“Colombia has a clear opportunity to avoid deeper dependence on imported transport fuels and the long-term costs associated with continued ICE vehicle sales. The country has structural advantages that support transition to BEVs, while providing an opportunity to phase down fuel subsidies, reducing pressure on public finances.”

The report calls on the Colombian government to develop a joined-up economic and industrial strategy that positions BEVs as a key sector in a modernised, low-carbon economy. It recommends strong supply-side regulations, co-ordinated fiscal reform, and targeted charging infrastructure rollout.

Read the full report here.

Lea la versión en español y descargue el informe.

Notes to editors

Leapfrog to Electric: Colombia. The Economic Benefits of Pro-Electric Vehicle Policy can be downloaded, free at [Link]. This report was produced in association with Polen Transiciones Justas.

Spokesperson: Ben Scott, Head of Energy Demand, Carbon Tracker

For more information and to arrange interviews please contact:
media@tracker-group.org

About Carbon Tracker

Carbon Tracker is a not-for-profit independent financial think tank that seeks to promote a climate-secure global energy market by aligning capital markets with climate reality. Part of the Tracker Group, Carbon Tracker’s research on the carbon bubble, unburnable carbon and stranded assets started a new debate on how to align the financial system with the energy transition to a low-carbon future.

The post Colombia could save US$40 billion in fuel import by accelerating electric vehicle adoption appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

The war in the Gulf has demonstrated once again that the energy system is at the mercy of capricious geopolitics. Clean local energy offers the antidote to this, as ECB Board Member and senior Dutch banker Frank Elderson wrote in an article in the Financial Times on 7 April. Apart from stating that repeated energy shocks – of which the war in the Gulf is the latest – pose a threat to the ECB’s primary mandate of price stability, Elderson’s core message was that the most effective way for Europe to reduce geopolitical risk was to accelerate the clean energy transition. Or to put it another way: the solution to volatile and expensive fossil fuels is not more volatile and expensive fossil fuels.

It is therefore perhaps surprising (and even more so given the uncertainty about when things will settle down in the Middle East and by extension on global energy markets) that many politicians and commentators in Europe and elsewhere continue loudly to lobby for more exploration and production of oil and gas – not only as the quick fix but as the longer-term policy approach.

There is however an alternative view, to be rigorously examined at a landmark international conference co-hosted by the Colombian and Dutch Governments at the Colombian port of Santa Marta on 28/29 April. And Santa Marta feels like it could not be more timely: as the first ever inter-governmental conference specifically to address a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels, so we can stay within Paris warming goals.

These are testing times for climate action. Which is why Santa Marta is significant; not only to demonstrate that international co-operation is alive and kicking; but that practical solutions can be found about how to accelerate the transition – and with many Global North countries recognising their historic responsibilities through their participation.

Politically, Santa Marta can herald a “new multilateralism”, where progressive countries in a coalition of the willing can co-operate on global issues; and crucially that co-ordinated, collective action can show in practice that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In the case of Santa Marta, the hope is that this coalition will not only bring much-needed forward movement on climate change, but that it kickstarts a process to complement and reinforce the UNFCCC process. The existing Brazilian Presidency is running its own roadmap process to take back to COP31 in November; but whether they can square the circle of the consensus principle, where large oil and gas producing countries have consistently blocked action on tackling fossil fuel phase-out, remains to be seen.

Although progress remains uneven across regions, the global energy transition is advancing rapidly – driven by falling clean technology costs and electrification. As Carbon Tracker research has shown, fossil fuel producing countries face a future of declining revenues as the energy transition drives down demand. Policymakers must proactively anticipate and prepare for these losses – for it. Anticipating declining export revenues can strengthen fiscal resilience in advance. One lever is to gradually reduce fossil fuel subsidies and responsibly redirecting resources before revenue pressures intensify. Reducing fossil production is not a policy choice – the market will impose it.

Global North oil and gas producers can help show the way with a strategic policy shift to low-carbon energy systems. The UK provides a good example of what can be achieved, and will feature as a case study in Carbon Tracker’s discussions in Santa Marta.

But tackling the risks is only one half of the equation. Santa Marta can also showcase the opportunities for countries to plot a path from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. Carbon Tracker’s recent research on Brazil and Colombia shows that an accelerated transition to electric vehicles could save $250bn and $40bn respectively in fossil fuel imports by 2050, compared with a ‘business as usual’ scenario.

Policymakers in Santa Marta will also benefit from innovative ideas on data tools and solutions as experts come together to shape a collective view of what data we have now – and what we still need – to move forward urgently with policies and initiatives on decarbonisation.

In conclusion, the governments meeting on 28/29 April will need to emerge from Santa Marta with momentum. The key will be to create some political space – tough when the eyes of the world are focused elsewhere – to enable a progressive coalition to take forward its work so that Santa Marta becomes both a process and a forum for a step-change in international co-operation on climate and the transition. Traditional economic thinking that the costs of transitioning away from a fossil-free economy will be too great still resides in ministries. This is why partnering with experts from civil society will be vital, to harness imaginative ideas and turn them into meaningful solutions.

Finance and investment, as Frank Elderson emphasises in his FT piece, are vital requirements to securing the transition. Public finance will supply only approximately 25% of the total $5-7trn transition finance required per annum, so it is incumbent on policymakers to create the incentives to scale in the other 75% from private capital. The investment perspective is therefore fundamental, and an important reason why Carbon Tracker is heading to Santa Marta to play our part there.

The post Will Santa Marta herald a new multilateralism on fossil fuel phase-out? appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Gulf tensions have, once again, pushed oil prices higher and raised gas price risk. Within weeks of another price surge, the same narrative dominated much of the commentary: the UK is sitting on “still huge” domestic reserves; energy security must be treated like defence; and the answer is to drill.

The instinct to take energy security seriously is right. But the conclusion has several problems. The first is pricing.

Domestic production and domestic price protection are different things

Oil and gas are internationally traded commodities, and that single fact is central to this debate. Whether a molecule is extracted from a platform west of Shetland or delivered through an LNG terminal on Teesside, the price it fetches is determined on world markets – in Rotterdam, in Singapore, at Henry Hub. UK consumers remain exposed to the same global price swings regardless of the origin of supply, and no volume of additional domestic production changes that exposure. This is why additional drilling cannot function as a price shield. A more durable approach is to reduce exposure to globally priced fuels by accelerating the system already replacing them: one running increasingly on British wind, British daylight, and British engineering. In the near term, scaling system flexibility – including battery storage – can also reduce the need for gas at peak times and limit the transmission of gas price spikes into electricity bills.

A maturing basin on a long timeline

New field development in a mature basin like the North Sea often takes five to ten years from approval to first production – long-cycle investments responding to short-cycle shocks, with an obvious mismatch between the two. The basin’s remaining reserves are also late-life and high-cost, dependent in many cases on generous tax treatment to proceed at all. Projects routinely presented as Exchequer revenue generators can deliver minimal net contributions once incentives are factored in, and in some cases may be negative. And even under optimistic industry projections, North Sea output continues its structural decline; new projects reshape the slope of that decline without fundamentally altering its direction.

The power shift matters more than new drilling

All of which matters rather less than the more fundamental shift already underway in how the UK generates electricity. Central projections put renewables at around three-quarters of UK power generation by 2030 – a trajectory driven by build rates already in progress, not by policy aspiration. As that share rises, gas moves from primary generation source to residual balancing function, called upon less frequently and for shorter periods. Any new North Sea development sanctioned today would arrive into a market where gas demand in power has already fallen substantially, where cheaper alternatives have taken much of the space it once occupied, and where the infrastructure of the old system is being steadily repurposed around it.

The chart illustrates the expected shift towards renewables by 2030 under a median forecast, with gas moving from a central price-setting role towards a more residual balancing function. Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan/clean-power-2030-action-plan-a-new-era-of-clean-electricity-main-report#our-pathway-to-2030

Gas as the driver of electricity price volatility

The less visible dimension of this shift concerns how gas currently shapes electricity prices across the whole system. Even as a minority source of generation, gas-fired plants set the marginal price of electricity – meaning that when gas prices spike, bills follow, regardless of how much wind and solar happens to be generating at the same moment. The connection runs through the market’s pricing architecture rather than through the physical share of gas in the mix, which is why periods of high renewable output have not historically translated into stable consumer prices in the way one might expect.

As renewables progressively displace gas from the system – pushing its share of generation below the threshold where it routinely sets the marginal price – that dynamic weakens. The exposure to imported gas price volatility that has defined UK energy bills for the past decade begins to recede with it. Official projections suggest the UK could become a net electricity exporter by 2030, from a position of importing 5-10% of its power today: a marker of how quickly the underlying supply arithmetic is changing.

A diversified supply cushion, and a shrinking need to use it

The UK already draws on domestic production, Norwegian pipeline imports, and global LNG –a supply base diversified enough to weather considerable disruption. What is changing is not the adequacy of that supply but the volume the system requires from it, which is falling as electrification and renewables reduce the economy’s gas intensity. Expensive new North Sea developments add cost and extend the lifespan of infrastructure at the precise moment the transition is being engineered to reduce dependence on it; they risk extending exposure to fuel price volatility without materially improving price protection or system resilience.

Reflex and strategy are not the same thing

Treating each price spike as evidence that more drilling is needed reflects a set of instincts formed in an era when gas supply and energy security were genuinely synonymous, and when the North Sea was a growth basin rather than a mature one in long-term decline. Those instincts have outlasted the conditions that made them sensible. Each new development sanctioned under their influence can lock in gas dependency for another fifteen to twenty years – sustaining exposure to the very price volatility that prompted the call for more drilling in the first place.

The post The Drilling Reflex – why price spikes do not justify more North Sea drilling appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Canada’s financial sector faces growing exposure to shifts in global energy markets and the accelerating energy transition.

On 31 March, Carbon Tracker will join The Energy Mix Mix for an online discussion focused on the implications for finance professionals, regulators and policymakers in Canada – a major oil and gas producer.

Drawing on our recent reports Fading Fortunes and Petro-Provinces at Risk, the session will examine how changing demand for oil and gas could affect asset values, provincial revenues and long-term investment decisions.

The post Navigating the Short- and Long-Term Outlook for Canadian Oil and Gas appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Carbon Tracker CEO Mark Campanale will be speaking at the FT Climate & Impact Summit, taking place 17–18 June 2026 in London, UK, with both in-person and digital attendance options.

The summit brings together global investors, policymakers and industry leaders to explore how financial markets can respond to climate risk while unlocking opportunities for resilient, low-carbon investment. This year’s theme “From climate risk into investable resilience” focuses on how capital can be mobilised to accelerate the energy transition and strengthen economic resilience.

Mark will share Carbon Tracker’s insights on how financial markets can better understand and price climate risk, and what this means for investors navigating the transition to a low-carbon energy system.

Register for the event here: https://climateandimpact.live.ft.com/page/4958250/register-now

The post Carbon Tracker at the FT Climate & Impact Summit 2026 appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

Its share price is now down roughly 80% from its 2024 peak. And it also noted there will be no dividend this year.

The explanation? The company “overestimated the pace of the energy transition.”

Translation: the market / consumer moved too slowly.

This is a familiar refrain from incumbent European manufacturers – the targets are too aggressive, consumers are hesitant, policy is misaligned. Slow the transition, and profitability returns.

But the market reality says otherwise.

Global EV penetration is around 25% of new sales in 2025 and plausibly heading toward 35–45% by 2030. That is not a stalled market. That is a compounding structural shift.

Note 2026-2030 estimates, BNEF, IEA

Stellantis’ BEV mix sits in the mid-single digits (c.6–10%). It is underweight the fastest-growing segment of its own industry.

Meanwhile, BYD – often still dismissed as a “Chinese government funded manufacturer – has grown from ~0.7m vehicles in 2021 to roughly 5m in 2025. That is a ~50% CAGR. It now rivals or exceeds major Western incumbents in volume.

BYD is not a subsidy story anymore – and as Stellantis is finding out it is hazardous and very expensive to avoid focussing on the pace of industry change and business model of new entrant competitors.

BYD is vertically integrated in batteries, scales electrified platforms at cost, and is exporting aggressively into Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Its growth reinforces battery learning curves and manufacturing leverage.

A model that traditional carmakers have not been able to follow due to increasingly stranded legacy capital assets and corporate engineering skills.

BYD is scaling into the new cost curve. Stellantis is defending legacy ICE exposure while hoping hybrids will cushion decline.

But hybrids, unless fundamentally differentiated, often cannibalise existing models rather than create new profit pools.

Source – BYD /  Stellantis

A century ago, the Ford Model T triggered an explosion of automakers. Most disappeared as scale economics and capital intensity reshaped the industry. Chrysler survived that first cull and now sits within Stellantis.

The question is whether this is a separate episode – or the second great consolidation of the auto industry.

For Stellantis, the write-down does not signal a collapse in EV demand; it signals a widening cost gap with dominant Chinese EV car firms.

Growth is increasingly concentrating in electrified platforms where vertically integrated players such as BYD have scale and battery cost advantages. Stellantis remains exposed to legacy ICE capacity, and therefore to the large costs of rapid change.

The core investor issue is whether Stellantis can close the structural cost gap without destroying further capital. That looks increasingly unlikely.

The post The stranded asset under the bonnet appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

What is the Santa Marta Process?

The Santa Marta Process is intended to move the fossil fuel phase-out debate from general commitments to practical pathways which can inform an overall roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. It will focus on the real-world challenges: supply and demand, economic and fiscal vulnerabilities, the role of state-owned enterprises, pathways to diversify and decarbonise, the key enabling condition of finance. The process links political decision-making with expert and civil society inputs so that the roadmap reflects both climate objectives and economic realities. 

Why it matters

The Santa Marta conference in April is unprecedented – the first time that a strong group of countries have come together actively to discuss how to transition away from fossil fuels, to meet the goals of the Paris agreement to limit warming. This conference marks the start of an ongoing Santa Marta Process to progress real-world transition, with a second conference envisaged for later this year. The challenge of the transition raises important questions that sit with finance ministries, economic planners, regulators and investors: fiscal reliance on fossil revenues, balance-of-payments exposure, sovereign credit dynamics, and the enabling conditions required to mobilise investment at scale. The Santa Marta Process provides a collaborative forum to address these constraints directly and to test policy and financing approaches against real-world geo-political and economic conditions. 

How Carbon Tracker is contributing

Carbon Tracker is a co-convener of the Global Science & Policy Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels hosted by the Universidad del Magdalena in Santa Marta on 24-25 April 2026. Carbon Tracker will work with universities and partner organisations to provide cutting-edge research and analysis that will inform the decisions governments and finance actors need to make. The purpose of this expert convening is to develop policy-relevant outputs – grounded in evidence – that can inform the roadmap discussions and strengthen the quality of the political decisions. 

What Carbon Tracker brings to the table

Carbon Tracker works at the intersection of the energy transition and capital markets. Our contribution will focus on three areas: 

• Managed decline through a finance and economics lens – Analysis of how different fossil fuel phase-out pathways may affect sovereign credit, fiscal resilience and market pricing of transition risk, including implications for sovereign borrowing costs and access to investors’ capital. 
• Diversification and transition finance enabling conditions – Evidence on the policy and investment conditions that support diversification and mobilise capital to fund clean energy infrastructure at scale, with a focus on the questions typically led by finance ministries, economic planners and regulators. 
• Data and decision support – Scenario-based work (drawing on the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels as a policy tool) to help compare decline pathways. These scenarios are intended to demonstrate the implications of various routes to decabonisation and transition trade-offs, not to prescribe outcomes. 

About the Global Science & Academic Pre-Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels 

The Science Pre-Conference convenes scholars, think tanks and practitioners across economics, political science, law, sociology and related disciplines. It includes outcome-focused workstreams: self-organised workshops designed to produce practical outputs which will feed into the inter-governmental conference proper. Workstreams include central banking, fossil methane, roadmap architecture, labour transition and regional economic diversification, economics and data, and state-owned enterprises, among others. Co-conveners are Universidad del Magdalena; University of British Columbia; University of Sussex; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Guangzhou; Carbon Tracker Initiative; Climate Strategies; IISD; and LINGO. 

Explore Carbon Tracker key resources relevant to the Santa Marta roadmap 

PetroStates of Decline: oil and gas producers face growing fiscal risks as the energy transition unfolds – fiscal exposure and sovereign risk
https://carbontracker.org/reports/petrostates-of-decline/ 

Switching to battery powered electric vehicles will save the Global South over $100 billion annually – demand-side disruption and oil demand implications
https://carbontracker.org/reports/electric-vehicles-in-the-global-south/ 

Tracking Emissions to Source – methodology underpinning the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels
https://carbontracker.org/reports/tracking-emissions-to-source/ 

Global Registry of Fossil Fuels – overview of the tool and how it is used
https://carbontracker.org/finally-we-have-a-global-registry-of-fossil-fuels/ 

For more information, contact the policy team financialpolicy@tracker-group.org  

The post Charting credible pathways to phase out fossil fuels – Santa Marta 2026 appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.