In Colombia, approximately 3,000,000 people lack access to energy. About 50% of the country’s territory is not connected to the energy grid and at least 18% of the population experience poor or unreliable access to the national grid or are burdened with energy bills that force them to choose between feeding their families or paying for electricity. This situation contributes to Colombia’s “energy poverty”. While Colombia’s energy system works well for those connected in the country’s main cities, it was not designed to be equitable.
The current administration under President Petro has made an ambitious commitment to establish 20,000 new structures called energy communities, aiming to drive a significant shift in the existing energy system in favor of equity, through cleaner forms of energy. By making communities protagonists in their own energy solutions, with subsidies for initial investments for unconnected communities and interesting incentives to crowd in new actors to the sector outside capital cities, the new framework provides the basis for a transition in energy with justice at its core. While the approach and level of ambition is commendable, the risk of implementation gaps, if this new enabling environment is not used, is real. Although changes to policies and incentives on paper were an important first step, real equity improvements will depend on local actors embracing new behaviors and practices that will result in energy transition being used as a means to more inclusive governance of the sector and improved local development outcomes.
In late 2023, the Governance Action Hub launched a political economy analysis using the SOAS-ACE framework to identify feasible entry points to support efforts in Colombia around climate change and energy transitions that could have a sustainable impact on more inclusive development outcomes. The analysis aimed to understand actors, their behaviors, their relative power, capabilities, and interests at the national, sector, and sub-sector levels of energy transition.
The Governance Action Hub’s Colombia team sought to understand if there was a way to support a long-term shift in the energy system toward greater equity, particularly given the leadership of the new administration under President Petro on climate change at the global level, and the need for an energy transition rooted in justice at its core at home.
This paper (originally titled, Colombia, Energy Transition and the Governance Action Hub) outlines the Governance Action Hub’s analysis on Colombia to date, summarizing findings from two initial stages of exploration: identifying feasible entry points and ground testing a working hypothesis around supporting the comunidades energéticas (energy communities, ECs) as a feasible entry point for promoting better access to affordable and reliable energy, ultimately resulting in improved local development outcomes and democratic resilience.
