Closing the extractive frontier: An interview with Colombia’s former Minister of Mines and Energy Andrés Camacho

First published at Phenomenal World.

Today, more than half of Colombia’s export revenues come from coal and fossil fuels. The industry employs roughly 100,000 people, a quarter of which are unionized through the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO). In this context, Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s plan to end domestic fossil fuel production is profoundly ambitious. It will require not only replacing the revenues generated by the industry, but securing financing for green energy infrastructure and production. The latter is especially difficult for a country strapped by strict fiscal rules mandating the preservation of balanced budgets. The transition also presents an enormous political challenge: beyond the mobilization by the country’s largest business associations, Petro’s plans have already faced pushback from allies in the USO who have expressed concern for preserving worker livelihoods.

Managing this complex effort is the Ministry of Mines and Energy. On March 19, we met with the former Minister of Mines and Energy, Omar Andrés Camacho Morales. Camacho is a lifelong activist — from the student movement for public education in the early 2000s, to the Movement for Peace of the following decades. From July 2025 to February 2025, Camacho contributed to the development of the Petro government’s energy transition agenda.

In the following, Minister Camacho reflects on Colombia’s decarbonization plans, the progress made thus far, and the core obstacles these efforts have faced. We discuss the ban on new contracts for oil and gas exploration, alternative sectors to promote future growth, and the ongoing (but to date, unsuccessful) effort to create a “green fiscal rule” that would allow more flexibility concerning the financing of renewable energy. And we consider the social foundations required to successfully manage the transition and give communities a stake in the production, commercialization, and decision-making processes surrounding renewable energy. These movements, Camacho notes, are crucial to facilitating regional unity that extends beyond the boundaries of nation-states.

Gabriel Hetland: What was your vision for the energy transition in Colombia as Minister of Mines and Energy?

We work close to the extractive frontier. We are not prohibiting the exploitation or exploration of hydrocarbons in Colombia. But we’re not increasing it. So we decided against signing additional, new contracts in hydrocarbon exploitation and exploration.

At this moment, there are about 308 exploration and exploitation contracts, and 300 of these contracts are in force, with 16 million hectares dedicated toward exploitation and exploration. The current scale should be enough to fulfill the tasks of the energy transition and decarbonization. Critics in Colombia say that we don’t want to continue oil exploitation. But this isn’t true — we’re committed to exploiting what currently exists.

Our starting point was that Colombia is not an oil country like Venezuela. We are a country that depends on oil, but we do not have the large deposits that other countries have, and that makes our economy very dependent on fossil fuels. We can’t increase our dependence without large deposits. Our country has a lot of oil, but the market conditions for this type of oil are more difficult. This puts us in a difficult spot.

When we came to the ministry, we utilized data, science, and engineering to develop a road map, which measured how to achieve a green transition in Colombia without putting the country’s energy security and sovereignty at risk. Usually, governments hire consultants to conduct these studies, but we wanted a sovereign exercise to recover state capacity. We organized an energy transition team within the ministry made up of Colombian professionals and those with technical expertise. This road map includes the analysis of many components: hydrocarbons, oil, gas, coal, electric energy, as well as an analysis of both supply and demand. It defines the medium and long term measures that we would have to adopt to reach the goal of decarbonization.

The Ministry published the findings in a document titled, “Energy transition scenarios for Colombia,” which considers the environmental and social dimensions needed to guarantee a just energy transition.

An energy transition has to be, in a country like Colombia, a just transition. This implies several elements: climate, environment, energy, and social justice. In a country with enormous inequalities, the transition should not only help to overcome dependence on hydrocarbons and reduce greenhouse gases, but it should also help us to overcome energy poverty. This is the basis on which we built the policies and programs that are currently being pursued by our government.

GH: What have been the achievements of developing this road map?

One of the main achievements is to develop the country’s greatest renewable potential. Colombia is a privileged country because it is in the equatorial zone and has abundant access to water, sun, and wind. One of the plan’s goals, still in progress, is to install 6 gigawatts of renewable energy in the country. Today we have 2 gigawatts installed that are delivering energy, especially solar, to the grid.

When we arrived there were only 0.2 gigawatts of renewable energy. In other words, in these two and a half years we have multiplied by ten Colombia’s solar energy capacity. This was achieved with projects that were behind schedule, which we took on the task of putting into operation. This year, the plan is to incorporate another gigawatt. Next year, the big bet is getting the first wind projects into operation. If the projected six gigawatts come on line, the country’s energy matrix will be 85 percent clean.1

The other great achievement, especially when it comes to environmental justice, has been our Energy Communities program. These are consumer groups that manage, administer, and efficiently use energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind. When we arrived in the government, many sectors said that implementing this program would be impossible. But this program allows us to bring the most economical energy we have — solar — to vulnerable communities. With solar solutions we solve problems of access and energy poverty in many areas of the country.

When we registered the communities that wanted to receive government support to build their own solar generation, we received more than 14,000 applications. We already have the communities identified, and 300 energy communities have been built and are operating. A thousand more are under construction. The Energy Communities program is unprecedented in Latin America — it is the most successful transition initiative in the continent.

Most of these energy communities are in territories that have been victims of the armed conflict. The program has demonstrated several things. The energy transition can be used to overcome poverty, but it can also help develop a rural electrification plan. Electrification is still centralized and 16 percent of Colombia remains with little to no electricity access.

We’ve also made progress with new energy sources. We’re developing three geothermal energy projects with Ecopetrol, the state oil company. There’s also an auction to take advantage of offshore wind energy. In addition, we’re building the ecosystem and the legal framework for Colombia to start developing hydrogen. Ecopetrol will soon build the largest green hydrogen production plant on the continent, producing some 800 tons per year.

There is also what we call hydrocarbon management, which is to guarantee stability in the sector. We have not had a single second of gas shortage, even in the difficult conditions of declining gas production in Colombia. Today we face the challenge of rising gas costs. We have managed, even through Ecopetrol, to maintain the country’s reserves, demonstrating that with the same contracts we can achieve efficiency in hydrocarbons.

GH: Colombia is a peripheral country that lacks access to credit at sufficient levels, and it’s also limited by a narrow fiscal rule that restricts financing possibilities. There are also other constraints, such as the fact that Ecopetrol cannot generate renewable energy on a large scale. Can you speak to these financial challenges?

We are economically dependent on hydrocarbons. Around 50 percent of the country’s income from exports comes from coal and oil. This means that we must pursue an economic transition at the same time as the energy transition. How do we replace those foreign currencies? How do we replace those revenues from oil and coal?

One achievement is that tourism now exceeds coal revenues in the country. This is very important, as it shows that the country can indeed move towards decarbonization, emphasizing that Colombia is a country of biodiversity rather than oil or coal. We are also building a green fiscal framework, which aims to answer the question of how to decarbonize the economy by overcoming this resource dependence.

But the fiscal space we have to pursue these measures is severely restricted. That is why President Petro has entered a global discussion about the tools that countries like ours can deploy to make the transition. Colombia has quite an ambitious goal, and we need international support, which can come from exchanging debt for climate action. That would open a fiscal space for countries like ours to have different loan conditions. But this is a discussion with international capital that is not so simple — green loan options involve global interests that are out of our hands. For the time being, we continue to pursue a decarbonization agenda with the resources we have available.

GH: And what are main challenges when it comes to Ecopetrol and legal prohibitions on renewable energy generation?

Ecopetrol, due to past laws and the way the country was conceived economically, has been part of the neoliberal model in Colombia. During its inception, the energy sector was divided into different branches, such that Ecopetrol is still currently prohibited from generating electricity.

It is a restriction that exists by law, and we have led a discussion in Congress to change it. If a new law is approved, Ecopetrol can begin with electricity generation this year. We have been able to issue a self-generation decree, where Ecopetrol can generate its own energy. Thus far, we have inaugurated about five Ecopetrol solar parks as an initial start.

Ultimately, Ecopetrol has to be the first company to make the transition. It is the largest company in the country and the company that provides the most resources (11 percent of the national budget). So, if we manage to make the transition of Ecopetrol, this will have a positive impact across the country.

Solar energy is already being produced in many of the refineries — in the Cartagena refinery, in Barrancabermeja, and in production fields. If we resolve this restriction on Ecopetrol, we can first accomplish an energy transition within Ecopetrol, and then we can take the possibility of Ecopetrol’s energy generation to the rest of the country.

GH: You are trying to pursue an energy transition under the framework of a representative democracy, with enormous difficulties due to the sectors that oppose it. What would you say about the possibilities and limits of being a leftist government in a democracy like Colombia?

Our approach to the energy transition is unprecedented, even among the Latin American left. Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador have different positions. The other countries, even those with progressive governments, maintained fossil fuel production and furthering exploitation, refusing to restrict the extractive frontier.

This puts us in an even more challenging situation, because not only are we going against the world, but even within the Latin American left, there is a major debate on how to address the energy transition. For us, the only way to prove that our plan is possible is to show that the country has not gone bankrupt, that Ecopetrol continues to be the most important company in the country. Ecopetrol continues to give dividends, and our transition proposal is possible, sustainable, and could even be more ambitious.

Lala Peñaranda: Many neoliberal countries have pursued the energy transition through a market, with private actors, favoring some elites. The Ministry, on the other hand, repositioned the role of the working class and put the unions and social movements at the center of the transition.

When we entered the Ministry we asked ourselves that question: How can we create a movement capable of defending against these conquests of the just energy transition? That is why we set ourselves the task of identifying the social subjects of the energy transition. We are pursuing broad change in Colombia. The subject of the agrarian reform, for example, is the peasantry. But we ask ourselves: who is defending the energy transition? First, there is the consumer movement, the citizens who are affected by poor quality public services, or by the non-existence of public services. We took on the task of helping to organize a movement of energy consumers. This culminated in MODEN, which is the national constituent movement for energy democracy. This movement is beginning to center public participation in issues of just transition.

There are instances of other groups that are already organized, such as the unions, though they have not always worked on these issues. We are helping to create a tool — which is the movement for energy democracy, but that movement has already been growing at the national level through energy communities, where communities that directly manage their energy can participate, give their opinion, and be subjects of this change.

Another issue that cannot be left aside is mining. In Colombia, there is a mining model that privileged multinationals and large economic groups and has left out small traditional miners. We also took on the task of helping organize mining workers, including female mining workers, and this has led to the emergence of efforts to organize small miners. These social forces within the mining and energy sector are for us what we could call the movement of democratic transformation for the green transition. At the Ministry, we helped develop these movements and guarantee popular participation.

Julian Gómez Delgado: What did you learn about the state from your experience at the Ministry? Has it changed your understanding of the state?

Yes, the first thing was to come up against the reality of a phrase that one is taught in one’s political militancy, which is that governing is one thing and power is another. The reality is that we are exercising the powers of the government, but the economic power in many of these sectors is held by financial conglomerates, unions, and companies — products of neoliberalism that transferred state capacity to the private sector. We came to assume a government of change within a state that has been reduced, where state capacity has been reduced, which has made it more difficult to deliver on our proposals.

We have also managed to take a step toward recovering state capacity. For example, the roadmap I mentioned on energy transition was drafted directly by the government itself instead of consulting firms. So what is the lesson I have learned? That there is still a lot that needs to be changed. Being in government is still not enough to make the transformations we need. This process requires greater continuity. In four years, we cannot transform what has been in place for decades, what is behind the apparatus of those who really hold power across economic sectors. This is a long term process.

From here on, I believe that we’re beginning a new agenda which was not in the orbit of the left and other progressive forces. In general, the left in our country has focused on health, labor, and pensions. But now, the climate and green transition agenda has become central. Now that I am out of the government, I will work on growing this agenda from within social movements.

GH: Can you explain to us how consumers, citizens, and workers participate in energy decisions? Some say that in these matters, the technical criteria should have the last word.

That was a prejudice that we constantly faced in Colombia. They have tried to judge us by calling us activists, saying that we don’t have technical expertise. But I believe that it is precisely more activism that is needed. People must become politically active and have an opinion, otherwise the energy transition becomes a transition written from the desk in the ministry. For us, participation is fundamental. Last year, we held fifty energy and mining assemblies where we asked people from the different regions how they were seeing the transition, what their needs were, and explained our proposals. There cannot be a just transition if we restrict democracy.

For example, in the process of creating an energy community, there is an energy training school. But we are not going to impose an engineering design from the center of the country onto Indigenous peoples, when there are uses and customs in the way things are built. We need to incorporate knowledge from the territories themselves.

GH: How should the left approach the challenges of the energy transition at this time? Should it focus on gaining representation in Congress, strengthening the trade union movement, or action at the international level?

It is most important that we strengthen the social organization around the energy transition. Only if we maintain that network will we be able to defend what has been achieved so far, and also promote the transition in the terms we have set. Then we can take this agenda to Congress, but it must be from the basis of a movement for energy democracy.

We are organizing energy democracy committees throughout the country, and anyone can participate in these committees, but we especially want to reach unorganized people, those who live in areas where there is no union and who need access to energy. The idea is to tell them what the transition is about and why it is important to them.

Our priorities are as follows: (1) growing the energy communities in the remaining years of Petro’s term; (2) developing transmission lines, especially when energy generation capacity is already there — the transmission line in Guajira, the Colectora line, will enable large generation projects using renewable energy; and (3) managing gas to guarantee efficient prices and prevent shortages.

LP: What steps should be taken towards international cooperation? Who are our allies in the just transition?

We need cooperation between peoples rather than between countries. Governments will always be in the sway of a political debate, but we have to push forward a Latin American movement. For example, we are already coordinating with energy communities in Brazil, with communities interested in public services in Argentina, and we must begin to organize a continental movement.

We want the Colombian experience to be instructive across the continent, showing how social movements can shape the government agenda. There’s also the  challenge of Latin American energy integration, which would require transmission lines between our countries to share energy.

GH: Many are wondering about President Petro’s strategy given all the changes in the cabinet. Being one of the ministers who have left office, what is your reading of the direction of the Petro government?

I have a very personal opinion of what the changes mean. The President is giving the opportunity to new leaders to be part of the government.

I am part of a new progressive generation in Colombia. If the President had not given us the opportunity to participate, to govern, we would not have been there. I believe that part of the rotation has to do with the possibility that more people can try the exercise of governing.

On the other hand, the President is developing a strategy to reconfigure the government to face the 2026 election. We are already nearing the end of his term, and he has to guarantee that our political project can continue in 2026. This means restructuring the cabinet and bringing in other political forces that were not present earlier.

This also requires some people leaving in order to work on other tasks. One of those people is me. I spoke to the President, and he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go out to work on this cause of the energy transition and consolidate the social movement. The same thing always befalls our governments: if we all enter the government, the social movements are sometimes left without leadership, or with restricted leadership. We also need to leave the government to work from the outside.

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  Currently, the country’s energy matrix is considered mostly clean. By 2023, the installed generation capacity was 17,771 MW of energy, about 70 percent of which is produced from hydro technology (11,942 MW).