Who Benefits and Who Sacrifices? The Contradictions of Renewable Energy and Copper and Molybdenum Exploration in Colombia’s Just Energy Transition

Introduction

Latin America is rapidly advancing its energy transition. Its renewable capacity increased by 51% between 2015 and 2022, accounting for 64% of regional power generation (Inter-American Development Bank 2024a). Major countries have set ambitious targets for 2030, including 80% renewable generation in Chile, 70% in Colombia, and 45% in Mexico. These commitments are part of a broader push to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and to increase energy security, often supported by initiatives like Renewables in Latin America and the Caribbean (RELAC), which aim to boost renewable capacity and energy sharing across the region.

However, this transition is also at a crossroads, according to the 2025 “Energy Transition Readiness Assessment” (World Economic Forum 2025). Latin America and the Caribbean have some of the most favorable conditions worldwide, such as abundant renewables, “critical” mineral wealth (i.e., lithium and copper), and relatively low fossil fuel dependence. However, the region must also navigate the legacy of its extractive history, including persistent power imbalances, inequity, and environmental degradation. These levels of inequality may be further exacerbated by the phase-in of mining projects to mobilize geological materials for use in low-carbon technologies.

Over 16 million people across Latin America lack access to electricity, with 75% of this gap concentrated in low-income rural areas (Energy Alliance 2025). Addressing this disparity requires massive infrastructure investment, including updating transmission networks and extending and developing renewable energy options. Specific care must be taken, particularly for marginalized communities who are often concentrated in areas that have historically been colonized and experienced both racial violence and territorial dispossession.

As part of RELAC, Colombia is managing a delicate energy transition by aiming for 20,000 renewable energy communities by 2026 and phasing out fossil fuels, all while mitigating high economic reliance on oil and gas, which make up over 50% of their exports (National Development Plan 2023). The country’s “Just Energy Transition Roadmap,” which launched in 2024, is a comprehensive strategy that intends to transform its energy system toward cleaner sources while ensuring social equity, democratizing energy systems, and creating job opportunities in the renewable energy sector (Energía 2025).

A just energy transition in the country’s Amazon, which encompasses approximately 42% of the national territory, focuses on replacing diesel-dependent generation with local renewable sources, such as solar and small-scale hydro. These efforts are aimed to foster sustainable off-grid solutions and promote community sovereignty over resources. The objective is to improve the quality of life in isolated, predominantly Indigenous and riverine communities, promoting energy autonomy and decarbonization in a region known for both its global ecological importance and fragility.

However, this transition must simultaneously manage the geopolitical pressures of balancing fossil fuel exports with clean energy investment. Specifically, there are challenges related to replacing oil with new extractive interests in search of “critical” minerals and ensuring local participation in decisions over land use, energy project planning, and the socio-economic futures of communities affected by fossil fuel divestment (Cotula 2020; Fritsche et al. 2017; IRENA 2023; Pucker 2024).

In this digest, I explore the opportunities and challenges associated with energy transition politics in the Andean-Amazonian region of Colombia. The digest specifically focuses on two communities that are being impacted by the tensions between national decarbonization goals and local impacts of proposed new “strategic” resource extraction. The two primary poles of this transition that impact these communities are:

1. The expansion of renewable energy (solar/hybrid) to replace diesel-based systems; and
2. The development of mining for transition minerals (i.e., copper and molybdenum) required for “green technologies” (United Nations 2024).

The increase in requests for titles for metallic mining in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of Colombia, which serves as a vital ecological corridor between the Pacific, Andes, and Amazon, has provoked growing tensions and resistance among residents and environmental experts.

Between January 2020 and August 2025, the National Mining Agency (ANM) received 136 applications in the states of Putumayo and Cauca to exploit copper, gold, molybdenum, and silver, of which 77 were archived and 59 are still under evaluation (Corporación Uma Kiwe Madre Tierra 2025). This region is part of the Jurassic porphyry belt of Colombia, a geologic strip with a high mineral concentration. It is also a major fluvial ecosystem where the atmospheric rivers of the Amazon meet the Andes mountains and discharge water that affects the global water cycle, climate, and maritime patterns. 

The primary project of the Vancouver-based Canadian multinational Copper Giant Resources Corporation (formerly, Libero Copper & Gold Corporation) is the Mocoa porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit in the state of Putumayo. Copper is arguably the most important metal for economic growth and global development, due to its indispensable role in electrification, infrastructure, and technology (Lynch 2024; Simon et al. 2026).

The slogan popularized by Copper Giant Resources Corp., which currently holds four mining titles over the municipality of Mocoa, is “Minería para la vida” (Mining for life), referring to the importance of copper for the global energy transition and renewable energy technologies, such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels.

Conversely, local communities have organized a public anti-mining campaign, arguing that “El agua vale más que el cobre” (Water is worth more than copper), and recognizing Mocoa as the “Corazón Hídrico de la Andino-Amazonía” (Hydric Heart of the Andes-Amazon).

Downstream in the Amazonian plains of Putumayo, the municipality of Puerto Asís has a historical connection to oil drilling. Large-scale oil exploration began with the Texas Petroleum Company (Texaco) in the 1960s, which transformed the region’s economy and territorial organization, provoking long-term socio-environmental conflicts and violence, including the murder of social leaders (Centro National de Memoria Histórica 2015; Puentes 2025). The municipality continues to be a site of exploration and production, and while considered to be a significant contributor to Putumayo’s oil royalties, has faced challenges in achieving long-term social and economic benefits from this extractive activity (Acevedo 2022).

While current information on the exact number of people without electricity in Puerto Asís is not available, the area is characterized by urbanizing informal settlements and rural, Indigenous, and riverine communities along the Putumayo River, many of which experience limited access to basic infrastructure. These simultaneous conditions of social vulnerability and historic dependency on the fossil fuel economy have led fluvial-based rural settlements in Puerto Asís, such as Playa Rica and the Puerto Vega Teteyé corridor, to become target sites for meeting Colombia’s national decarbonization goals. Specifically, the creation of “renewable energy communities” through the distribution of solar-powered boats and construction of a solar park— ecofriendly technologies that utilize copper.

A significant political challenge for transitional energy strategies is the creation of what Sovacool et al. (2020) coined a “decarbonization divide,” where upstream, often Indigenous or rural, communities bear the environmental and social impacts of new mineral extraction for the benefit of downstream, urban, or global users. Emerging low-carbon transitions in mobility and electricity are effectively implicated in toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, and intersectional forms of injustice. Thus, two extremes are potentially created—both equity-oriented opportunities and profound legal and social conflicts where questions can be raised over how a “just” energy transition will be achieved. Primarily—who decides, who pays, and which peoples and places will bear the negative costs.

If extractive dynamics are reconfigured under the category of clean energy in ways that reproduce classic patterns of territorial dispossession, the social and environmental burdens will continue to be externalized onto the groups historically subjected to vulnerability and human rights violations. (Ancheita 2026). Many scholars have characterized this process as green colonialism or green extractivism (Blackhouse et al. 2025; Dorn et al. 2022; Dunlap et al. 2024; Marin et al. 2023; Riofrancos 2025).

Far from representing a rupture with fossil fuel extractive models, the global energy transition runs the risk of inscribing itself, through new material forms and normative legitimacies, into long-standing colonial and racist regimes that continue to propel ecological destruction and disenfranchisement.

As a result, the Andean-Amazonian region of Colombia provides an important opportunity to evaluate the factors that may lead to the creation of decarbonization divides and green coloniality. It also sheds light on how deep-seated structural challenges make just energy transitions in Latin America and the Caribbean extremely complex.   

To do so, this policy digest examines the tensions and possibilities surrounding transitional energy strategies in the communities of Mocoa (where exploration for copper and molybdenum is underway) and Playa Rica, Puerto Asís (where a solar energy park has been constructed). It reviews the difficulty of governing “critical” minerals and phasing out fossil fuels with justice and equity, while conserving the Amazon’s biodiverse ecosystem, and balancing community priorities with the demands of national and global energy transitions. It concludes by outlining preliminary policy recommendations for local and national governments, international climate organizations, and transitional energy think tanks.  

Mocoa: “There’s No Copper Worth a River”  

Attempts to exploit copper in Mocoa’s Andean-Amazonian foothills go back to the 1970s, with the Canadian corporation Libero Copper—now Copper Giant Resources Corporation—acquiring the mining titles in 2018 and assuming exploration activities in 2021. According to technical reports from the mining companies, these mountains are one of the greatest “critical” mineral reserves on the continent—containing a baseline reserve of at least 4.6 billion pounds of copper and 504 million pounds of molybdenum (Martínez 2025).

The titles encompass 7,850 hectares located less than 10 kilometers from Mocoa’s urban center and overlap with the Doña Juana-Cascabel Volcanic Complex, the Upper Mocoa River Basin Protective Forest Reserve, and Serranía de los Churumbelos Natural National Park—an area characterized by biodiversity, strategic water sources, sacred ancestral sites, indigenous reserves, and peasant settlements.

La Carpa de Resistencia (The Tent of Resistance) has pacifically organized in Pueblo Viejo, Mocoa since March 24, 2025, to protest this mining project. Residents and environmentalist allies denounce two main threats:  

1. Contamination of Strategic Water Sources. The area overlapping with the titles is a crucial aquifer recharge zone for the surrounding ecosystem and communities (Corpoamazonia 2020). If the Mocoa River were to be affected, there would be subsequent impacts to the Caquetá River that it feeds, which then flows into the Amazon River. Consequently, the contamination of the Mocoa River would have repercussions across at least 16 municipalities, 4 states, and as many as 3 countries, given that it forms part of the vast Amazon basin (Grupo de Berlin and Rincon Flórez 2025).
2. Risk of Torrential Landslides. Approximately 80% of the municipality of Mocoa is exposed to high hazard geologic conditions regarding mass movements, torrential flows, and flooding. Historically, Mocoa has experienced more than 80 disaster events, with the largest in magnitude occurring on March 31, 2017, which left over 300 people dead (Corporación Uma Kiwe 2025). Additionally, Putumayo ranks sixth on the national scale of risk to climate change threats (Instituto de Hidrología Meteorología y Estudios Ambitales 2017). The possible tragedies that could be provoked by the seismic pressure of an industrial mining project in such geologically unstable terrain warrant application of the precautionary principle and conservation measures, rather than further subsoil interventions.   

Indeed, controversies over medium- and large-scale metallic mining in Mocoa began years earlier. On December 6, 2018, the municipal council signed the 020 Accord (Republica de Colombia 2018), which prohibited exploration and exploitation activities until it was nullified by the Council of State in 2024. Despite the Accord’s existence, Libero Cobre violated its terms by carrying out exploration activities that affected forest cover and water sources. The company has provoked deep social division, mounted disinformation campaigns, and reneged on promises made to communities, inciting the mobilization of the Carpa. 

These actions also led the regional environmental authority, Corpoamazonia, to take sanctioning and protective measures against the multinational firm. The latest measure was in June 2025 and entailed adopting Resolution Director General (DG) Number 0631 to declare a vast area of roughly 90,000 hectares in Mocoa as protected area and prohibited mining within its boundaries. However, this measure remains in legal and administrative limbo, leaving the territory vulnerable to further activity on the part of the corporation (Amazon Watch 2025). 

The invalidation of the 020 Accord is a stark illustration of the ongoing legal and social conflicts over national subsoil rights—which belong to the state—and regional/local sovereignty over soil use that has long characterized the fossil fuel era. By prioritizing mining projects, such as for copper, in bioculturally diverse, ecologically fragile areas like the Andean-Amazonian region, this dispute highlights a key tension. The “just energy transition” may simply be replacing the fossil fuel age with a high-impact mining epoch, sacrificing local autonomy and bioculturally diverse, water-rich ecosystems to secure transition minerals. 

The Solar Park of Playa Rica: “Panels in Place of Petroleum”

Downstream, along the banks of the Putumayo River in the municipality of Puerto Asís, around thirty five families live in the rural settlement called Playa Rica. They depend on artisanal fishing, agriculture, and more recently, ecotourism activities for their livelihoods. Ten years ago, a group of these families founded the “Asociación de Pescadores Artesanales y Agropecuarios de la Vereda Playa Rica” (ASOPAAP) to foster community-based tourism, including bird watching, hiking, boat riding, and traditional fishing.

Like other rural riverine settlements in this economically oil-dependent area of the Amazon, the community does not have electricity. Many of the families have acquired basic solar lighting kits that allow them to charge cell phones, power small appliances, or use energy for a few hours each night. As of last year, ASOPAAP was selected as the recipient of 72 solar panels, a solar panel motorized boat, and two freezers, as part of the government’s “decarbonization of the Amazon” strategy.

While no oil drilling occurs in the community, residents experience river contamination by oil and gasoline from boat motors, along with oil spills from nearby areas, lack of wastewater management, illegal mining, and erosion provoked by the fluvial transport industry.  

The solar park installed in Playa Rica cannot provide electricity to the homes of the community. Instead, it is meant to charge the donated freezers and two solar panel motorized boats, the second of which is meant to provide rural school transportation in the neighboring Puerto Vega Teteyé corridor. Without a photovoltaic-based (PV) charge, these boats only last for about 40 minutes, powered with the passive energy produced by direct sunlight.

Members of ASOPAAP calculate that between the gas and oil they normally purchase to fuel their gasoline-motorized boats, solar power will allow them to save around 40 mil pesos (roughly $10 USD) per day. These savings are significant in rural areas that are reliant on informal economic activities where typical monthly incomes are generally less than the current national minimum wage (around $386 USD).

ASOPAAP members are excited about the future potential of the solar park, even though the quantity of energy to be produced is still unknown. They view the solar motorized boats as a first step to begin to mitigate the contamination of the Putumayo River, with the hopes that this renewable technology will be scaled up to replace the large gasoline and diesel-powered boats that dominate the region’s fluvial-based economy.

However, there are questions about the sustainability of the panels, given their 25-30-year life span and their need to be recycled through specialized, licensed, or manufacturer-backed programs to recover valuable materials like aluminum, glass, and copper. The fact that these panels contain copper, which is likely less than 1% of their total weight, also raises concerns. 

As one ASOPAAP leader said, “it is not very sustainable to destroy the environment and affect communities in other places, much less in our same territory.” They are referring to the conflicts related to proposed copper mining in Mocoa, located two hours north of Playa Rica and part of the interconnected fluvial system of the Putumayo and Caquetá River watersheds.     

Risks and Opportunities for Just Energy Transition in the Andes-Amazonia

Oil production in Putumayo has declined by nearly 50% since 2015 (Inter-American Development Bank 2024b), creating uncertainty for jobs, local economies, and public revenue, justifying the entrance of new extractive interests in the region’s “critical” mineral wealth. However, it also opens an important opportunity to rethink development models and chart a new path for the territory—one that can be equitable, environmentally conscientious, and community driven. Pulling from the supporting literature on the just energy transition in the Amazon, I outline key considerations for an alternative transition framework in Table 1.

Policy Recommendations Towards Just Transition in Latin America

The proposed and actual extraction of “transition” minerals has led to a new boom in mining activities in Latin America. However, as Fassina et al. (2025) mention, labels such as “transition,” “critical,” and “strategic,” can obscure the socio-environmental impacts of extraction by creating a heightened and accelerating sense of urgency and justification that sidelines concern from affected communities and ecosystems. Considering that mining is an activity linked to the highest number of environmental defender murders worldwide (Global Witness 2025), it is unclear how an energy transition that heavily relies on the extraction of new materials will not perpetuate and compound socio-environmental injustices and human rights violations inherited from Latin America’s fossil fuel legacy.

At the same time, the region is a growing leader in clean energy, even when progress on energy security and enabling conditions continues to lag. The complexity of balancing enormous renewables potential with global demands to supply the raw materials that power “clean technologies” poses concrete challenges to imagine and implement a just transition. Such a transition depends upon not only avoid perpetuating, but also attending to historical inequities and harms that go beyond the mere technification of justice (Ojeda-Pereira and Tironi 2026). Given these challenging crossroads, I draw on the insights on the actions of policymakers and energy justice think tanks that can help to avoid creating a decarbonization divide and imposing green coloniality.

Beyond Corporate Responsibility Mechanisms

Extractive economic activities often unfold in ecologically fragile and socially complex territories, where weak governance, insufficient application of legal safeguards, and minimal citizen participation amplify environmental degradation and social conflict. The limited enforceability of corporate human rights obligations and the reductive concepts of corporate social responsibility often reveal a structural gap between climate commitments and justice standards.

To counter this, it is imperative to ensure deeply collaborative, meaningful participation, and horizontal dialogue in the planning and execution of transitional energy frameworks. Following an energy justice perspective, transition is a historical and prolonged political process as well as a desired outcome. Conditions for free, prior, informed consent (FPIC) and effective participation must be guaranteed for all workers, suppliers, consumers, and communities, especially for directly affected stakeholders and historically excluded groups (Jenkins et al. 2016; Rielli and Wang 2026; Sovacool and Dworkin 2015).

Given that many territories impacted by energy transition decisions are already sites of structural inequity and socio-environmental conflicts, respect for the self-determination of peoples and effective protection that guarantees the physical integrity of environmental defenders are baseline requirements to have a meaningful discussion of just transition.

Coherent Policies to Protect the Amazon

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in November 2025, Colombia’s Ministry of Environment announced that the country will ban new oil and mining projects in the Amazon, designating its entire Amazon biome as a “renewable natural resource reserve,” covering 483,000 square kilometers (48,300,000 hectares). However, this initiative focuses on halting new extractive projects with the potential to act as a legally binding barrier to pending concessions and requests that have not yet begun operations, rather than canceling existing active mining titles.

Researchers found that a third of the protected areas of the Brazilian Amazon suffer some level of potential “critical” mining pressure (Arellano-Yanguas and Bernal-Gómez 2022; Carneira et al. 2026). The vast Amazon basin is currently the site of a profound geopolitical and environmental contradiction—intense international pressure to conserve the region as a vital climate stabilizer conflicts directly with a global surge in demand for critical minerals that lie beneath its soil.

A truly just energy transition must integrate social, environmental, and territorial justice, protecting the Amazon as a crucial, functioning, and flourishing ecosystem. The renewable energy economy must respect the principles of regional autonomy so that the push for sustainability does not subordinate local control to national and multinational extraction goals.

Decision-making over energy governance should prioritize the justice concerns of the region’s Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and peasant communities who have long borne the brunt of oil extraction. The mere shift to renewable energy technology in some locations of the Amazon is not enough if other areas of the basin are converted into new sacrifice zones. 

Imagine and Build Reparative Transition Pathways

Just transition energy approaches become reparative by actively reversing historical injustices, specifically targeting the economic and environmental legacies of colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism as they intersect with energy production.

To be reparative, the transition should address environmental liabilities and redistribution by redirecting resources, investments, and economic benefits to communities and territories damaged by prior energy systems. These efforts should include a clean-up of contaminated water sources and clearly assigned financial responsibility for remediation of soils, forests, and other damages (both material and immaterial).

It is important to develop advanced recycling technologies for battery minerals (lithium and cobalt) and solar panel components (copper and aluminum) that emphasize reducing the environmental impact of renewable technologies by integrating them into a circular economy. Community benefit agreements should be established over the use and distribution of renewable energy. A renewables focus should also include the diversification of the economy, strengthening sustainable value chains like cocoa, Amazonian fruits, agroforestry, and ecotourism, and resolving land tenure issues with the real participation from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and other rural communities.

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