In a week and a half, Colombia will host the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16. The country is also an important partner for Germany on climate issues. Despite economic difficulties and a national budget heavily dependent on oil and coal export revenues, the country is pursuing ambitious goals. Alexandra Endres analyzes how the German government supports the country – financially and through the Colombian-German Partnership for Climate and a Just Energy Transition.
We are also introducing our new series: “Ideas for the Climate,” which will feature reports about progress, possible solutions, and innovations for the future at irregular intervals. To kick things off, Nick Nuttall reports on food made from CO2, water and renewables, an approach that more and more start-ups are pursuing.
In the news section: Disillusionment with the goal of halting global deforestation by 2030, a mixed interim assessment of efforts to triple renewable energies and praise for Chile’s climate policy.
Colombia is pursuing ambitious climate policy goals. The government under President Gustavo Petro aims to phase out fossil fuels and completely convert to a green economy – even though the emerging country has historically been heavily dependent on state revenues from oil and coal exports. Colombia is also campaigning for a global fossil fuel exit at UN climate summits. In a recent interview with Table.Briefings, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said that her country will probably take around 15 years to abandon oil and coal completely. Without help from developed countries, it will hardly be possible.
Germany has promised to help Colombia in this endeavor. “As an Amazon neighbor country and one of the countries with the highest biodiversity,” Colombia is an important and reliable partner in climate action, the German Foreign Office said. “Colombia wants to drive forward its own energy transition. We support this with the Colombian-German partnership for Climate and a Just Energy Transition agreed in 2023.” During bilateral consultations in mid-September, the Foreign Office reported “significant progress.” It said implementing the bilateral climate and energy partnership was a high priority for both sides.
In addition to the Federal Foreign Office, the partnership involves the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUV) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on the German side. Five working groups are at the center of the partnership:
For a while, particular focus was placed on green hydrogen from Colombia. The Colombian government hopes to replace current fossil fuel exports with exports of green hydrogen in the future – and Germany will need hydrogen imports. The German government plans to facilitate investment in Colombian hydrogen projects for German companies. A steering group coordinates cooperation between the BMWK and the Colombian Ministries of Energy and Industry.
Under the partnership, Germany also provides financial aid. In late 2023, the BMZ pledged a low-interest loan of up to 200 million euros to support Colombia in implementing its climate goals – primarily through expanding renewables and climate adaptation measures. According to its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), Colombia aims to cut its emissions by 51 percent by 2030 compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario. Decarbonizing the energy sector and tackling deforestation are particularly important.
According to a ministry spokeswoman, two additional loans for improved climate action and adaptation in Colombian cities have also been pledged for 2024. In response to a question from Table.Briefings, she said that there was “great potential to contribute to global climate and environmental protection through climate-resilient urban development”. The BMZ also supports the “Expert Panel on Climate, Debt and Nature” set up at Colombia’s initiative.
The International Climate Initiative (IKI) provides further financial support. Colombia is a priority country for the initiative. The BMUV states, “The German government’s cooperation with Colombia under the IKI currently comprises seven ongoing bilateral projects with a funding volume of 65.1 million euros.”
One example is the “IKI JET” project, co-funded by the European Union, which is working towards a Just Energy Transition in Colombia’s coal regions of La Guajira and Cesar. As part of this program, the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) supports local communities, authorities, companies and trade unions in developing joint plans for the post-coal era. The aim is to clarify how the region intends to expand renewables and organize the coal phase-out in a socially just way. A new IKI Call for Proposals is currently underway for projects in two areas to be funded by the BMWK and BMUV with 20 to 25 million euros each: The “Roll-out of renewable energies and economic diversification for a just coal phase-out” and the “Landscape-scale restoration as an economic and multifunctional nature-based solution for peace.”
Colombia clearly shows that climate action, biodiversity conservation, economic transformation and peace policy go hand in hand. For example, preserving the Amazon rainforest and the Pacific coast reduces Colombia’s greenhouse gas emissions and improves the country’s ability to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. The current Colombian government also hopes that the rainforest will become a foundation for a future green economy, for example through sustainable tourism.
Conversely, resolving land conflicts, providing people with a sustainable livelihood, and enabling communities to live together more peacefully help improve the management of nature conservation areas, as well as climate action.
This is also reflected in the motto of the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16, which begins on 21 October in Cali: “Paz con la Naturaleza,” peace with nature. The BMUV considers the conference “of central importance for overcoming the dual crisis of climate and biodiversity,” a spokesperson said. The Ministry hopes that COP16 will bring “decisive progress to advance the integration of biodiversity and climate change” and agree on tangible measures to tackle both crises.
Colombia’s government has promised the population to achieve “total peace” (paz total) in the country. The next presidential elections in two years will decide whether the people will continue to support their plans – and whether the country’s fossil fuel phase-out will continue.
A wide range of food ingredients that are made from products such as palm and coconut oil or fats from the dairy industry could soon disappear from the menu. Around the world, new companies are entering the market that utilizes CO2 captured from power plants to create new ingredients that have never been near a cow or a farm. The developers claim that their products – including butter and oils used for baking and cooking – taste and work just as well as conventional products.
“I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter,” said billionaire Bill Gates after participating in a taste test. Gates has invested in a Californian start-up that produces a milk alternative. The Swedish start-up Green-on also claims that people would not notice any difference. Annette Graneli, a former employee of the RISE research institute and now CEO of Green-On, tells Table.Briefings: “Our raw materials are green electricity, water and carbon dioxide.”
The Gothenburg-based company plans to have a pilot plant up and running by the end of the year, which will use carbon dioxide that possibly comes from a paper mill. Graneli says her goal is to stop deforestation, reverse biodiversity loss and reduce water scarcity linked to palm and other oil plantations.
The company’s head of technology has received an award from the Swedish Chemical Society for producing food without using arable land. The company has secured venture capital for expansion and is supported by AKK, a company that makes oil and fats.
A recent article in Nature Sustainability entitled “Food Without Agriculture” examined this new food technology trend and the potential benefits: “Oilcrops such as soy and palm have an enormous environmental footprint globally.” The article states that around 300 million hectares of land are currently used to produce these foods, accounting for an estimated 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use.
Other companies in this emerging field include Solar Foods in Finland, which conducts a pilot project to produce proteins, and Savor in California, which uses CO2 and hydrogen to make butter.
A competitive steel industry in the European Union is essential for prosperity, the resilience of industrial value chains, employment, economic security and the green transformation. It offers more than 300,000 employees good industrial jobs with collective bargaining protection and co-determination. Steel is systemically relevant as the foundation of industrial value creation in Europe. Numerous integrated value chains need steel as a basic material. What’s more, as a high-tech material, steel paves the way for the green transformation. Without steel, no wind turbine would turn. Not a single kilowatt hour of electricity could be transported. Without steel, no electric car would drive even one kilometer.
As a basic material for the mobility and energy transition, green steel in particular will ensure a secure and sustainable supply of basic materials in the future. European steel producers have therefore begun to invest billions in low-carbon steel production with government support and to implement innovative decarbonization concepts.
Nevertheless, the European steel industry is in a historic crisis. A creeping deindustrialization is underway. Europe is the only region in the world with a shrinking steel industry. In the last ten years, the EU has lost a fifth of its production capacity and more than 20,000 jobs. Instead of a trade surplus (16 million tons in 2012), the EU now has a large deficit (10 million tons in 2023). Capacity utilization in European steelworks is now below 65%.
There are many reasons for this development. Increasing import pressure from countries with overcapacity plays a key role. The overcapacity from China alone exceeds total European production by a factor of 5. The combination of unfair trade practices and the lack of a European response to this makes this a toxic mix for the steel industry.
Some of the instruments used to support the European steel industry are already working. One example is minimum import prices, such as for grain-oriented electrical steel. However, price adjustments are urgently needed here. A follow-up solution is also urgently needed for the Steel Safeguards, which expire in 2026.
In addition, the existing trade defense instruments (anti-dumping and anti-subsidy procedures) must be used more quickly and effectively against unfair trade practices. To this end, WTO and EU legal leeway must be used. As a first step, the new European Commission should clearly identify this scope in the first quarter of 2025.
Before the CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) is launched in 2026, the EU urgently needs to correct the obvious design flaws. So far, there has been no solution to relieve the burden on steel exports to third countries. To ensure that products that are essentially made of steel cannot only be produced economically in non-European countries after the introduction of CBAM, we are calling for the scope of application to be reviewed, taking into account bureaucratic, economic and trade policy hurdles. This applies above all to downstream products for which competitiveness in Europe would deteriorate massively because they do not fall within the scope of application.
The development of energy costs is another key issue. In the short term, the EU should enable member states to establish temporary relief mechanisms such as industrial electricity prices. In the long term, however, a competitive energy supply can only be ensured through a genuine European energy market. To achieve this, the energy transport infrastructure must be consistently expanded across national borders.
In order to make green steel competitive, the EU must play its part in developing lead markets for green steel. In addition to a revision of the Public Procurement Directive, which includes issues relating to the Paris climate targets and collective agreements, an early review of the CO2 fleet limits for cars can also play an important role. We need to move away from a pure consideration of what comes out of the exhaust pipe to an overall CO2 balance of a vehicle. This would make green steel more attractive for manufacturers.
The EU Commission is now called upon to quickly bring the stakeholders to the table and agree on a binding steel action plan with companies, trade unions and works councils. Politicians must finally get into action mode. Continuing to stand idly by and watch developments would mean accepting the collapse of entire value chains and authoritarian regimes determining in the future whether retrofitting and the energy transition are still possible at all in Europe and, if so, at what price.
Dennis Radtke has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2017. He sits on the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for the CDU/EPP. He has also recently become Chairman of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association (CDA). Previously, Radtke was trade union secretary at IG BCE.
In a week and a half, Colombia will host the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16. The country is also an important partner for Germany on climate issues. Despite economic difficulties and a national budget heavily dependent on oil and coal export revenues, the country is pursuing ambitious goals. Alexandra Endres analyzes how the German government supports the country – financially and through the Colombian-German Partnership for Climate and a Just Energy Transition.
We are also introducing our new series: “Ideas for the Climate,” which will feature reports about progress, possible solutions, and innovations for the future at irregular intervals. To kick things off, Nick Nuttall reports on food made from CO2, water and renewables, an approach that more and more start-ups are pursuing.
In the news section: Disillusionment with the goal of halting global deforestation by 2030, a mixed interim assessment of efforts to triple renewable energies and praise for Chile’s climate policy.
Colombia is pursuing ambitious climate policy goals. The government under President Gustavo Petro aims to phase out fossil fuels and completely convert to a green economy – even though the emerging country has historically been heavily dependent on state revenues from oil and coal exports. Colombia is also campaigning for a global fossil fuel exit at UN climate summits. In a recent interview with Table.Briefings, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said that her country will probably take around 15 years to abandon oil and coal completely. Without help from developed countries, it will hardly be possible.
Germany has promised to help Colombia in this endeavor. “As an Amazon neighbor country and one of the countries with the highest biodiversity,” Colombia is an important and reliable partner in climate action, the German Foreign Office said. “Colombia wants to drive forward its own energy transition. We support this with the Colombian-German partnership for Climate and a Just Energy Transition agreed in 2023.” During bilateral consultations in mid-September, the Foreign Office reported “significant progress.” It said implementing the bilateral climate and energy partnership was a high priority for both sides.
In addition to the Federal Foreign Office, the partnership involves the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUV) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on the German side. Five working groups are at the center of the partnership:
For a while, particular focus was placed on green hydrogen from Colombia. The Colombian government hopes to replace current fossil fuel exports with exports of green hydrogen in the future – and Germany will need hydrogen imports. The German government plans to facilitate investment in Colombian hydrogen projects for German companies. A steering group coordinates cooperation between the BMWK and the Colombian Ministries of Energy and Industry.
Under the partnership, Germany also provides financial aid. In late 2023, the BMZ pledged a low-interest loan of up to 200 million euros to support Colombia in implementing its climate goals – primarily through expanding renewables and climate adaptation measures. According to its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), Colombia aims to cut its emissions by 51 percent by 2030 compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario. Decarbonizing the energy sector and tackling deforestation are particularly important.
According to a ministry spokeswoman, two additional loans for improved climate action and adaptation in Colombian cities have also been pledged for 2024. In response to a question from Table.Briefings, she said that there was “great potential to contribute to global climate and environmental protection through climate-resilient urban development”. The BMZ also supports the “Expert Panel on Climate, Debt and Nature” set up at Colombia’s initiative.
The International Climate Initiative (IKI) provides further financial support. Colombia is a priority country for the initiative. The BMUV states, “The German government’s cooperation with Colombia under the IKI currently comprises seven ongoing bilateral projects with a funding volume of 65.1 million euros.”
One example is the “IKI JET” project, co-funded by the European Union, which is working towards a Just Energy Transition in Colombia’s coal regions of La Guajira and Cesar. As part of this program, the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) supports local communities, authorities, companies and trade unions in developing joint plans for the post-coal era. The aim is to clarify how the region intends to expand renewables and organize the coal phase-out in a socially just way. A new IKI Call for Proposals is currently underway for projects in two areas to be funded by the BMWK and BMUV with 20 to 25 million euros each: The “Roll-out of renewable energies and economic diversification for a just coal phase-out” and the “Landscape-scale restoration as an economic and multifunctional nature-based solution for peace.”
Colombia clearly shows that climate action, biodiversity conservation, economic transformation and peace policy go hand in hand. For example, preserving the Amazon rainforest and the Pacific coast reduces Colombia’s greenhouse gas emissions and improves the country’s ability to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis. The current Colombian government also hopes that the rainforest will become a foundation for a future green economy, for example through sustainable tourism.
Conversely, resolving land conflicts, providing people with a sustainable livelihood, and enabling communities to live together more peacefully help improve the management of nature conservation areas, as well as climate action.
This is also reflected in the motto of the UN Biodiversity Conference COP16, which begins on 21 October in Cali: “Paz con la Naturaleza,” peace with nature. The BMUV considers the conference “of central importance for overcoming the dual crisis of climate and biodiversity,” a spokesperson said. The Ministry hopes that COP16 will bring “decisive progress to advance the integration of biodiversity and climate change” and agree on tangible measures to tackle both crises.
Colombia’s government has promised the population to achieve “total peace” (paz total) in the country. The next presidential elections in two years will decide whether the people will continue to support their plans – and whether the country’s fossil fuel phase-out will continue.
A wide range of food ingredients that are made from products such as palm and coconut oil or fats from the dairy industry could soon disappear from the menu. Around the world, new companies are entering the market that utilizes CO2 captured from power plants to create new ingredients that have never been near a cow or a farm. The developers claim that their products – including butter and oils used for baking and cooking – taste and work just as well as conventional products.
“I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter,” said billionaire Bill Gates after participating in a taste test. Gates has invested in a Californian start-up that produces a milk alternative. The Swedish start-up Green-on also claims that people would not notice any difference. Annette Graneli, a former employee of the RISE research institute and now CEO of Green-On, tells Table.Briefings: “Our raw materials are green electricity, water and carbon dioxide.”
The Gothenburg-based company plans to have a pilot plant up and running by the end of the year, which will use carbon dioxide that possibly comes from a paper mill. Graneli says her goal is to stop deforestation, reverse biodiversity loss and reduce water scarcity linked to palm and other oil plantations.
The company’s head of technology has received an award from the Swedish Chemical Society for producing food without using arable land. The company has secured venture capital for expansion and is supported by AKK, a company that makes oil and fats.
A recent article in Nature Sustainability entitled “Food Without Agriculture” examined this new food technology trend and the potential benefits: “Oilcrops such as soy and palm have an enormous environmental footprint globally.” The article states that around 300 million hectares of land are currently used to produce these foods, accounting for an estimated 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use.
Other companies in this emerging field include Solar Foods in Finland, which conducts a pilot project to produce proteins, and Savor in California, which uses CO2 and hydrogen to make butter.
A competitive steel industry in the European Union is essential for prosperity, the resilience of industrial value chains, employment, economic security and the green transformation. It offers more than 300,000 employees good industrial jobs with collective bargaining protection and co-determination. Steel is systemically relevant as the foundation of industrial value creation in Europe. Numerous integrated value chains need steel as a basic material. What’s more, as a high-tech material, steel paves the way for the green transformation. Without steel, no wind turbine would turn. Not a single kilowatt hour of electricity could be transported. Without steel, no electric car would drive even one kilometer.
As a basic material for the mobility and energy transition, green steel in particular will ensure a secure and sustainable supply of basic materials in the future. European steel producers have therefore begun to invest billions in low-carbon steel production with government support and to implement innovative decarbonization concepts.
Nevertheless, the European steel industry is in a historic crisis. A creeping deindustrialization is underway. Europe is the only region in the world with a shrinking steel industry. In the last ten years, the EU has lost a fifth of its production capacity and more than 20,000 jobs. Instead of a trade surplus (16 million tons in 2012), the EU now has a large deficit (10 million tons in 2023). Capacity utilization in European steelworks is now below 65%.
There are many reasons for this development. Increasing import pressure from countries with overcapacity plays a key role. The overcapacity from China alone exceeds total European production by a factor of 5. The combination of unfair trade practices and the lack of a European response to this makes this a toxic mix for the steel industry.
Some of the instruments used to support the European steel industry are already working. One example is minimum import prices, such as for grain-oriented electrical steel. However, price adjustments are urgently needed here. A follow-up solution is also urgently needed for the Steel Safeguards, which expire in 2026.
In addition, the existing trade defense instruments (anti-dumping and anti-subsidy procedures) must be used more quickly and effectively against unfair trade practices. To this end, WTO and EU legal leeway must be used. As a first step, the new European Commission should clearly identify this scope in the first quarter of 2025.
Before the CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) is launched in 2026, the EU urgently needs to correct the obvious design flaws. So far, there has been no solution to relieve the burden on steel exports to third countries. To ensure that products that are essentially made of steel cannot only be produced economically in non-European countries after the introduction of CBAM, we are calling for the scope of application to be reviewed, taking into account bureaucratic, economic and trade policy hurdles. This applies above all to downstream products for which competitiveness in Europe would deteriorate massively because they do not fall within the scope of application.
The development of energy costs is another key issue. In the short term, the EU should enable member states to establish temporary relief mechanisms such as industrial electricity prices. In the long term, however, a competitive energy supply can only be ensured through a genuine European energy market. To achieve this, the energy transport infrastructure must be consistently expanded across national borders.
In order to make green steel competitive, the EU must play its part in developing lead markets for green steel. In addition to a revision of the Public Procurement Directive, which includes issues relating to the Paris climate targets and collective agreements, an early review of the CO2 fleet limits for cars can also play an important role. We need to move away from a pure consideration of what comes out of the exhaust pipe to an overall CO2 balance of a vehicle. This would make green steel more attractive for manufacturers.
The EU Commission is now called upon to quickly bring the stakeholders to the table and agree on a binding steel action plan with companies, trade unions and works councils. Politicians must finally get into action mode. Continuing to stand idly by and watch developments would mean accepting the collapse of entire value chains and authoritarian regimes determining in the future whether retrofitting and the energy transition are still possible at all in Europe and, if so, at what price.
Dennis Radtke has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2017. He sits on the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs for the CDU/EPP. He has also recently become Chairman of the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association (CDA). Previously, Radtke was trade union secretary at IG BCE.
