I got to know U.N. Secretary General António Guterres through his work on climate. Throughout his tenure, he’s been an outspoken voice warning about the risks of rising emissions. But what struck me as the most relevant Future Proof insight during our fireside chat at the TIME100 Summit in New York this week wasn’t his climate warning but rather his concern over the breakdown of international norms. 

“If international law is disrespected, if countries do not care about the norms they have themselves established, the result is the kind of chaos we are witnessing in so many parts of the world,” he said. 

Energy depends on global supply chains, international cooperation, and the rule of law. Just a few years ago, all of that could be taken largely for granted, allowing most executives to focus on execution. But chaos, as Guterres described it, threatens all of those things and makes geopolitics an urgent concern. The Iran war and the crisis at the Strait of Hormuz is just the start.

The system that emerges from this moment is impossible to predict, but it’s safe to expect a few bedrock assumptions to change. After decades where efficiency has been prioritized above everything else, countries and companies may be increasingly willing to pay a premium for both locally sourced resources and redundancy. And, while energy markets have always been subject to government influence, the pressure on public officials to create policies that prioritize security over efficiency will only grow.

“Every nation should be looking at energy supply, energy security, food supply, food security,” Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told me last week, ”in addition to military security.”

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The idea of redundancy is nothing new. Countries stockpile oil in strategic reserves to protect from disruption. In electricity markets, power companies make a whole business around spare capacity for days when the power system is stressed. 

But the scale under discussion today is something new entirely. New oil pipelines, for example, to avoid the Strait of Hormuz at the cost of tens of billions of dollars, have become a key talking point. Others are pushing for new mines in the U.S. to give the country access to critical minerals whose supply chains are currently controlled by China.  

Importantly, the concern isn’t coming just from policymakers and a select few executives whose businesses would benefit. In my conversations with executives across a wide range of sectors, cost has become a secondary concern to securing supply, full stop. Boards are also electing members with geopolitical expertise. And banks and consulting firms are increasingly bulking up on geopolitical risk advisory. A 2024 EY survey found that more than 80% of boards were considering political risk in their strategy, up from 40% just three years prior. And the risks have only grown since then.

Inevitably, this means new demands on government. In our conversation, Dimon reiterated his call for the U.S. to embrace well designed industrial policy that will help protect the country.  “National security is energy security,” he said. 

The climate implications cut in different directions. Localized supply chains can reduce emissions from shipping products around the world many times over. On the other hand, redundancy means higher emissions as duplicative facilities and processes are built. Of course, as I’ve written about before, there is also the possibility that countries and companies turn to renewable energy because it helps avoid the mess of volatility altogether. 

Climate advocates, Guterres included, like to emphasize that renewables are cheaper and faster. In an era of energy security concerns and a focus on redundancy, that may no longer be the best argument. “The sun will not disappear, the wind will not stop blowing,” said Guterres. “Every country that bases its energy in [renewable energy] will have safety in the use of energy.”

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More than 50 countries are meeting today in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the first international conference on phasing out fossil fuels—in what could prove to be a global turning point for global climate action. 

“This is the first serious attempt to center fossil fuels in global climate cooperation,” says Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. “The conference here really represents a historic opportunity for countries willing to take action on the root cause of climate change, to come together and strengthen international cooperation on the implementation of a phase out of fossil fuels.”

The conference, which was first announced at the annual U.N. climate summit COP30 in Brazil last fall, will be held from April 24 to 29 and co-hosted by the Netherlands and Colombia. Since taking office in 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has made winding down fossil fuels a national priority. 

The conference comes as countries around the world are feeling choked by rising energy and gas prices from as the war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed oil and gas prices up globally. “The crisis has really exposed the real cost of depending on fossil fuels—in terms of price volatility and energy insecurity,” says Natalie Jones, a senior policy advisor in the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s energy program. “It's really underscored that the transition to renewable energy, electrification, and energy efficiency is more important than ever—and these are all the topics that will be discussed at this conference.” 

Around the world, clean energy is emerging as a more reliable and cost-effective power source. Last year, clean energy generation surpassed the global rise in electricity demand with the share of renewables like solar, wind, and hydropower making up more than one-third of the world's electricity mix for the first time in modern history. 

But coordinated global action towards formally transitioning away from oil and gas has so far been absent. While countries meet every year for global climate negotiations, the annual summits are notoriously quiet on the topic of fossil fuels. The 2015 Paris Agreement does not mention fossil fuels, and it took nearly three decades for governments to agree to transitioning away from fossil fuels at COP28 in 2023. In recent years, thousands of oil, gas, and coal lobbyists have participated in the climate summits, which are meant to be focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The most recent global climate conference, COP30, ended last year with no mention of fossil fuels. 

What’s more, the COP process requires a consensus, which means that a small minority can block action. 

“This conference is so important because it's the first time that countries are getting together outside of COP to really talk about the real cause of climate change, which is fossil fuels,” says Jones. 

The countries participating represent one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government. However, some of the world’s biggest emitters—including the U.S., Russia, India, and China—will be absent. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. “What's so valuable about this space is that it affirms that countries willing to take action can do so in spite of the persistent resistance of the biggest petro states and polluters,” says Reisch. “The momentum behind getting off of fossil fuels is unstoppable. The biggest blockers and laggards who have for years really stymied progress in the U.N. climate talks, their absence is in some ways, an opportunity for other countries to step in and to explore what they can do together without those states.”

The conference presents an opportunity to come up with pathways for countries looking to transition away from fossil fuels, and eliminate some of the barriers that encourage fossil fuel reliance. 

“The point of it is to be able to get into some of the tricky questions about how to phase out fossil fuels,” says Leo Roberts, associate director for energy transitions at E3G, a climate change think tank.

That includes discussions on how to phase out systems that encourage fossil fuel reliance—like investor-state dispute settlement systems, which allow big companies to sue governments for adopting environmental protection laws, or creating preferential trade agreements for countries that are committed to the transition.

“They're not just things that one country can do by itself,” says Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. 

The conference sets the stage for states to come together to develop a treaty on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Organizers hope to establish, within a year, formal negotiations for a Fossil Fuel Treaty, a binding international framework that would manage a fossil fuel phase-out. A second international conference hosted by the Pacific Island nation Tuvalu, will be hosted within the year.

Experts also hope to see countries come up with their own individualized road maps of what a transition away from fossil fuels might look like on a national level. 

“The challenge I would issue to all countries who are attending is what are you doing back home? What are the measures you are taking? What are the plans you are putting in place?” says Jones. “It's all very well to come to these international forums and say, ‘We think this is really important,’ but are you putting your money where your mouth is?”