The outgoing Petro government issued two related but distinct resolutions in the final weeks of its mandate that together address the structural problems most frequently cited for Colombia's electricity supply crisis: the chronic disconnect between generation and transmission project planning, and the grid's vulnerability to high-impact disruptions from extreme weather, equipment failure, and cyberattack.
Read moreThe outgoing Petro government recorded an important achievement: Colombia's installed capacity in solar and wind energy reached 4,626.73 MWp as of July 17th, 2026, surpassing the 4 GWp milestone of the administration's flagship 6GW+ program and representing a more than twenty-fold expansion from the approximately 200 MWp of non-conventional renewable capacity the government inherited in August 2022.
Read moreColombia's electricity system has crossed a threshold its operator XM had been warning about for years: available firm energy is no longer sufficient to cover projected demand under extreme drought scenarios, and the shortfalls are projected to persist across three consecutive reliability charge periods.
Read moreThe Comisión de Regulación de Energía y Gas (CREG) has named economist Adriana Jiménez Delgado as executive director for a 12-month term, formalized under Resolution CREG 105 015 of 2026.
Read moreWith fewer than two weeks left in his administration, President Gustavo Petro declared a national disaster for the El Niño phenomenon on July 23rd – Colombia's first such declaration linked explicitly to an electricity supply emergency – and simultaneously ordered a CoP$4T budget reallocation to the National Disaster Risk Management Unit (UNGRD), bringing its total El Niño resources to CoP$8T.
Read moreA comprehensive El Heraldo analysis published July 26th, based on interviews with six sector leaders, delivers the most structured account yet of the structural failures that have placed Colombia in its most vulnerable energy position since the 1992 blackout.
Read moreLa Guajira is the most electricity-poor department in Colombia's Caribbean region, with energy coverage reaching just 54.6% of its territory according to UPME, a figure that puts it well below the already inadequate national rural average of 75.9% that leaves 1.4 million homes across the country dependent on candles, kerosene, and other costly and polluting alternatives.
Read moreColombia's electricity system enters its most exposed five-day window of 2026 on Thursday, when SPEC shuts for scheduled maintenance through August 3rd .
Read moreThe clearest articulation yet of why El Niño is simultaneously a gas crisis and an electricity crisis came from Tomás González in a recent interview with El Tiempo, in which the former Mines and Energy Minister mapped the convergence of pressures the de la Espriella government will face from day one.
Read moreOutgoing Minister Edwin Palma disclosed on July 22nd, at a Colombia Solar ceremony in Barranquilla, that the transition team coordinating the sector handover for the incoming De la Espriella government had sent the ministry an official written request to abstain from continuing to execute and expand the Colombia Solar program during the transition period.
Read morePetro's outgoing government filed its final tax reform before the new Congress on July 21st, placing the mining and energy sector at the center of fiscal controversy for the second time in four years.
Read moreThe President's Legal Secretary had several decrees in process on July 17th accepting senior official resignations, El Tiempo's Investigative Unit reported, as the outgoing Petro government entered its final three weeks.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Colombian Agricultural and Livestock Research Corporation (AGROSAVIA) have formalized a bilateral cooperation agreement with Thailand to develop bioenergy from agricultural and livestock waste.
Read moreEPM issued an urgent public alert, warning that intelligence received from multiple sources indicated possible blockade actions in the North and Northeast subregions of Antioquia that could prevent operating personnel from accessing five of its hydroelectric generation facilities.
Read moreThe financial deterioration of Air-e has accelerated well beyond the figures that have circulated publicly.
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Lazard's 2026 LCOE+ benchmark says renewables remain the cheapest new-build despite rising costs across all technologies.
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The Ministry of Mines and Energy used the final session of Colombia's National Risk Management Council on July 10th to deliver its most unambiguous public warning yet about the coming climate event: the approaching El Niño could be the most severe episode recorded in the last three decades.
Read moreTwo of Colombia's most prominent energy sector executives exited their roles in the week of July 14th, their departures overlapping with the broader institutional transition ahead of August 7th.
Read moreTwo El Tiempo investigations, eleven days apart, trace the arc of Colombia's hydroelectric maintenance crisis from internal CND recommendation to formal ministerial alert.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy hosted a five-day Regional Training Course on energy demand modelling organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Bogotá in early July, bringing together specialists and representatives from 13 Latin American and Caribbean member states.
Read morePresident Gustavo Petro requested and received the resignation of Mines and Energy Minister Edwin Palma on July 17th, placing ANH president Pablo Yesid Fajardo in temporary charge of the ministry with just over three weeks left in the government.
Read moreThe day after Abelardo de la Espriella's June 21 election victory, Colombia's energy and mining sector moved quickly from congratulating the incoming president to handing him the bill.
Read moreMayor Alejandro Char inaugurated Las Gardenias Community Energy Project on July 9 -- the first of its kind in Barranquilla, marking a locally led step into distributed solar generation in a city that has served as the symbolic center of Colombia's Caribbean electricity crisis.
Read moreMinister Edwin Palma sent a formal letter to the CREG expert commissioners on July 8th, publicly rebuking the regulator for failing to implement the eight regulatory measures it committed to delivering in May to protect the national interconnected system during El Niño.
Read moreColombia's 2026 Multidimensional Energy Poverty Report (IPEM) confirmed on July 8 that the share of households in energy poverty fell from 22.3% in 2024 to 20.6% in 2025 – a 1.7 percentage point reduction equivalent to 227,532 households and 641,640 people exiting energy poverty in a single year.
Read moreWith the International Research Institute for Climate and Society placing the probability of El Niño at 80-90% for the second half of 2026 – and projections suggesting it could be among the most intense episodes of the past 30 years – Bancóldex, Colombia's business development bank, has launched a new phase of its "Energía Solar se Reactiva" program, making CoP$100B available to companies of all sizes for the installation of photovoltaic solar systems.
Read moreEcopetrol's July 9th El Niño contingency plan reveals a company that has quietly become a material contributor to Colombia's electricity system resilience – not as a customer of the grid but as an self-generator whose 1,863 MWp of installed capacity can operate independently of the national interconnected system and thereby reduce pressure on shared reservoir levels.
Read moreAs Colombia faces its most demanding El Niño season in years, a common thought has emerged in public debate: the idea that the country should simply turn on its entire thermal generation fleet to protect reservoir levels.
Read moreThe Ministry of Mines and Energy presented its final four-year electricity sector balance on July 9, framing the Petro government's legacy as a structural transformation of Colombia's generation matrix – and using the occasion to publicly condemn the de la Espriella transition team's suspension of the energy sector handover process as an act of institutional irresponsibility with direct consequences for El Niño preparedness.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Resolution 0808 on June 30th, establishing for the first time the environmental terms of reference that developers must follow when preparing Environmental Impact Studies for offshore wind energy projects.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Transport published a draft resolution on July 7th establishing the country's first comprehensive national regulatory framework for light electric personal urban mobility vehicles – covering electric scooters, skateboards, monowheels, and electric bicycles – as a second public comment round under Law 2486 of 2025.
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Colombia's reservoir system entered July in better shape than May but still short of where XM needs it to be and the improvement is almost certainly temporary.
Read moreThe designation of María Nohemí Arboleda as the incoming Mines and Energy Minister received an immediate institutional welcome from the Caribbean region on July 14, when the RAP Caribe – Colombia's Caribbean regional planning body – together with the Comités Intergremiales of Atlántico, Bolívar, Magdalena, Córdoba, Cesar, and Sucre jointly issued a statement of support and put forward a structured roadmap for the incoming minister to begin addressing the Caribbean energy crisis from day one.
Read moreThe Ministry of Mines and Energy published an updated regulatory framework for the Colombia Solar program on July 2, replacing the earlier 2026 resolution with a more detailed set of technical, financial, and operational rules governing how solar photovoltaic systems are installed in strata 1, 2, and 3 households connected to the national interconnected system.
Read moreVice president-elect José Manuel Restrepo made the economic cost of Colombia's energy crisis concrete on July 12th, posting on X after a meeting with sector leaders convened by El Tiempo that a blackout under current El Niño conditions would cost the country approximately CoP$204B per hour of lost supply.
Read moreColombia's electricity service quality improved measurably in 2025, with 74.6% of municipalities meeting the regulatory standard for interruption duration per user and 80.1% meeting the frequency standard, a meaningful step forward from 2024.
Read moreFor the electricity sector, the naming of María Nohemí Arboleda Arango as Minister of Mines and Energy is the most reassuring cabinet announcement of the transition period.
Read moreColombia's incoming government faces a climate scenario that has hardened since earlier in 2026.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy and EPM are accelerating construction of the first prototype of the Cuadras Energéticas ("Energy Blocks") model – a community-scale distributed solar generation concept designed to bring shared clean energy to urban neighborhoods block by block.
Read moreA legal proceeding before the Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca has emerged as the sector's best near-term hope for unlocking the resources needed to keep Colombia's thermal generation fleet fueled through El Niño and Natalia Gutiérrez, president of the Consejo Gremial Nacional, used a detailed X thread on July 2 to call on the Tribunal to act urgently.
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Colombia's industrial sector is paying the second-highest electricity tariff in Latin America, according to data from Asoenergía, the association representing Colombia's large industrial energy consumers.
Read moreThe Ministry of Mines and Energy has granted Colombia's first geothermal exploration permit under its new regulatory framework, authorizing a five-year program of subsurface investigation at El Barranquero, an area straddling the municipalities of Samaná in Caldas and Nariño in Antioquia.
Read moreAir-e Intervenida reported on July 8 that 106 people were captured for electricity theft across Atlántico, Magdalena, and La Guajira in the first half of 2026, as the result of 264 high-impact operations conducted jointly with the Attorney General's office and the National Police between January and June.
Read moreTwo earthquakes measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5 that struck northern Venezuela in late June killed more than 3,800 people and caused widespread infrastructure damage -- but left the country's upstream oil production essentially unscathed.
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Alejandro Arbeláez, general manager of Sociedad Hidroituango, used a July 5th interview with Valora Analitik to deliver the most operationally specific public warning yet about Colombia's blackout risk -- and to put two concrete proposals on the table for the incoming de la Espriella government: activate more thermal plants immediately, and advance the clock by one hour to optimize use of natural daylight.
Read moreAir-e Intervenida presented two strategic infrastructure projects to the UPME in early July, seeking financing from the Fondo de Apoyo Financiero para la Energización de Zonas Rurales (Finanical Support for Rural Electrification Fund, FAER) to strengthen electricity service in rural areas of Atlántico and Magdalena – the first time in a decade the Caribbean distributor had submitted projects to this fund.
Read moreColombia's energy and gas regulator CREG sent a delegation to Cartagena on July 6th for a two-day technical visit to Afinia and Grupo EPM, combining boardroom briefings with on-the-ground field tours through some of the city's most challenging electricity service zones.
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The defining moment of Colombia's 2Q26 transport transition came on May 29, when journalists, diplomats, and city officials boarded Bogotá Metro Line 1 trains for the first time as the system made its third and most significant test run, now on energized rail, from the Patio Taller to Station 2 in the Gibraltar neighborhood.
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Tesla's arrival in Colombia has reshaped the country's automotive market faster than almost any observer anticipated.
Read morePuerta de Oro, Colombia's largest solar park, entered commercial operations on July 6th, an arrival that Valora Analitik noted comes at a strategically significant moment, with El Niño conditions confirmed and the national grid under pressure to build non-hydraulic generation capacity.
Read moreThe electricity sector's immediate response to president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella's June 30 social media broadcast – in which he warned of an imminent energy crisis inherited from the outgoing government and pledged his administration would honor the state's obligations to the sector – was unambiguous: industry association leaders called it a "positive signal" that restores confidence across the entire electricity supply chain at the most critical possible moment.
Read moreThe regulatory backstory behind the Caribbean energy tariff crisis became clearer when El Heraldo published a 22-page letter that CREG sent to President Gustavo Petro and Minister Edwin Palma on November 28, 2025 – a document that had been sitting undisclosed until the ombudsmen of Barranquilla and Santa Marta revealed its existence.
Read moreThe most underreported dimension of Colombia's El Niño crisis is not the reservoir levels: it is the simultaneous convergence of scheduled maintenance at the country's largest generation plants with the precise period when the system most needs them available.
Read moreThe Caribbean electricity crisis became the first substantive policy commitment of the de la Espriella presidency even before his August 7th inauguration.
Read moreThe rationale behind EPM's decision to spin off 35 municipalities from Afinia into a new subsidiary called Energía Atenea is essentially one of financial quarantine: separating a territory with energy loss rates of 40% and bill collection rates of just 60% from the rest of Afinia's more functional operation.
Read moreThe Superintendency of Public Services signed a Agreed Management Program (PGA) with Empresa de Energía Eléctrica de Vichada – Electrovichada – placing the isolated department's electricity provider under a structured corrective and preventive framework after regulatory inspections found a combination of technical, operational, and financial deficiencies serious enough to threaten service continuity.
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Colombia enters its seventh consecutive year of failing to commission the electricity generation capacity its own planning agency projected, according to XM data reported by Valora Analitik on June 27 -- and the timing could not be worse, with El Niño now confirmed and potentially extending into the first quarter of 2027.
Read moreColombia's incoming government faces an electricity system running a firm energy deficit that XM projects will widen every year through 2029.
Read moreJuan Ricardo Ortega, president of Grupo Energía Bogotá (GEB), issued one of the sharpest public warnings yet about Colombia's transmission infrastructure crisis in a conversation with ACIPET reported by Valora Analitik on June 26, framing Bogotá's energy restriction risk not as a future scenario but as a present reality already cutting off new industrial demand.
Read moreAir-e Intervenida issued a public statement seeking to calm the more than 1.3 million users in Atlántico, Magdalena, and La Guajira alarmed by President Petro's liquidation announcement, confirming that electricity service will continue with total normality and that Colombian public utility law prohibits liquidation from proceeding until a new operator has formally assumed service delivery.
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Colombia's automotive sector closed the first half of 2026 with 157,620 new vehicle registrations -- a 50.1% jump over the same period in 2025 -- and, more significantly, a structural shift in what Colombians are buying.
Read moreAcolgen president Natalia Gutiérrez used a Semana interview published June 24 to deliver the electricity generators' industry association's most direct warning yet to the incoming government: the El Niño response agenda is not a transition-period discussion: it begins on inauguration day.
Read moreThe Superintendency of Public Services issued Circular Externa 20261000000624 on June 30, ordering all electricity, gas, water, sewerage, and waste collection companies in Colombia to activate their contingency plans without delay ahead of an El Niño event that IDEAM projects will intensify significantly from September onward, with the Andean and Caribbean regions most exposed.
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Energy Institute's 75th Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 confirms that the energy transition is accelerating in aggregate terms even as fossil fuels continue to expand in absolute volume -- a paradox that defines the current phase of the global system.
Read moreLatin America's renewable energy endowment gives it a structural advantage in the global competition for artificial intelligence infrastructure investment, according to Steven Carlini, head of Data Centers and AI at French energy technology company Schneider Electric.
Read moreXM's Bulletin 348, published June 27, delivered the starkest available measure of Colombia's renewable energy buildout failure: of the 4,475 MW expected to enter the national interconnected system during 2026, only 321 MW -- just 7.2% of the annual target -- had actually connected as of the report date.
Read moreMines and Energy Minister Edwin Palma used a June 18 visit to Sincelejo – for the handover of solar projects to market traders and families in Sucre – to publicly endorse the creation of a majority state-owned electricity commercializer for the Colombian Caribbean, framing it as the structural solution the region needs after what he described as decades of private-sector failure.
Read moreUnder pressure from users and local media over rising electricity bills, Air-e – currently under government intervention through the Superintendency of Public Services – issued a public statement on June 24 explaining that the June tariff increase was driven by market conditions beyond its control rather than by any unilateral decision of the intervened company.
Read moreColombia dropped from 35th to 43rd place in the World Economic Forum's 2026 Energy Transition Index -- a ranking of 120 countries -- during the four years of a government that made decarbonization and the acceleration of the energy transition its defining political banner.
Read moreEl Niño was officially confirmed on June 11, three months ahead of the expected timeline, and NOAA's projections point to a potentially severe episode, possibly the worst since 1950.
Read moreColombia's energy regulator CREG has issued Resolution 101 113 of 2026, establishing for the first time a comprehensive regulatory framework for Battery Energy Storage Systems (SAEB -- Sistemas de Almacenamiento de Energía con Baterías) connected to the national interconnected grid.
Read moreColombia's energy and gas regulator CREG put a proposed demand-reduction incentive program out for public consultation on June 23, framing it explicitly as a pre-emptive El Niño measure following IDEAM's June 11 confirmation that El Niño conditions have arrived in the equatorial Pacific and are expected to intensify through the second half of 2026.
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Colombia's electricity system is running a firm energy deficit that will widen every year through 2029, according to data from XM, the national electricity market operator, reported by Valora Analitik on June 22.
Read moreThe Petro government used the week of June 17-20, just before the final presidential vote, to announce a cluster of solar energy deliveries and regulatory changes spanning five different types of project, as it pushed to consolidate its Colombia Solar and Comunidades Energéticas programs before the August 7th transition
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy has designated Karen Schutt -- currently an expert commissioner at CREG and a former deputy energy minister -- as technical manager of the Sectoral Committee created under Resolution 40269 of 2026 to coordinate the government's response to El Niño and oversee strategic infrastructure milestones, including the scheduled maintenance at the SPEC regasification terminal in Cartagena.
Read moreThe Caribbean electricity crisis has become one of the most urgent files awaiting Abelardo de la Espriella on August 7, and it is a substantially worse problem than the one the Petro government inherited in 2024.
Read moreColombia's energy and gas regulator CREG has issued Resolution 101 114 of 2026, establishing a permanent regulatory framework for activating additional generation capacity and demand flexibility tools whenever the National Interconnected System (SIN) faces critical hydrology conditions.
Read moreColombia's main electricity and public services industry associations lined up on June 22 to congratulate president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella and put forward a shared framework for engagement with the incoming government, according to El Heraldo.
Read moreVenezuela has signed a memorandum of understanding with GE Vernova – the energy technology company responsible for generating approximately 25% of global electricity, spun off from General Electric – to develop projects aimed at improving the country's chronically deficient power supply.
Read moreLong-time readers will know that tariff-setting is an ongoing problem for Colombian regulators and politicians. Turns out the European Union has the same issues.
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Colombia's El Niño weather event has arrived, and the country enters the dry season with reservoir levels already running roughly 10 percentage points below where they should be. XM, the electricity market operator and ISA subsidiary, warned as of June 17 that under scenarios resembling the driest episodes in the historical record, aggregate reservoir levels could descend to approximately 30% of useful capacity by the time the phenomenon peaks – far below the 80%-plus level that XM considers the minimum adequate entry point into the dry season.
Read moreEPM's Tepuy photovoltaic solar park in La Dorada, Caldas received ISO 9001:2015 certification from Colombia's national standards body Icontec on June 10, recognizing the quality of its operation and maintenance systems.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and Ministry of Mines and Energy signed a Memorandum of Understanding on June 17 with Iceland's Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate, establishing a bilateral framework for cooperation in geothermal energy development.
Read moreSeven of Colombia's major energy sector industry associations – Andesco, Acolgen, Andeg, Asocodis, SER Colombia, Naturgas, and ACP – issued a joint public warning on June 18 against President Gustavo Petro's announcement that he intends to liquidate Air-e, the electricity distributor serving Atlántico, Magdalena, and La Guajira after 21 months of government intervention.
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Yesterday’s presidential voting had a declared winner but the results are not definitive and the loser is contesting the result.
Read moreColombia has begun the largest distribution of individual solar solutions in the ministry's history, with the first 1,003 photovoltaic units handed over in Uribe, Meta on June 14 -- the opening act of a national program that will deploy more than 30,000 systems across non-interconnected zones and bring electricity for the first time to roughly 120,000 Colombians.
Read moreThe Colombian Institute of Petroleum and Energy Transition (ICPET), Ecopetrol's research arm, has launched an expanded operating model centered on decarbonization, circular economy applications, and nature-based solutions, deepening the institute's pivot toward energy transition technologies.
Read moreColombia's Ministry of Mines and Energy has issued Resolution 40267 of 2026, establishing the supply management framework to govern natural gas distribution during the scheduled maintenance of the SPEC regasification terminal in Cartagena, set for July 30 to August 3.
Read moreThe Ministry of Mines and Energy issued three press releases in the week of June 10--12 announcing a cluster of renewable energy deliveries and a high-profile project reactivation, presenting them collectively as evidence that the government's just energy transition is reaching remote and historically marginalized territories.
Read moreColombia's electricity generation buildout has fallen catastrophically behind schedule just as demand is hitting historic peaks, according to a detailed analysis by Valora Analitik drawing on data from grid operator XM, an ISA subsidiary.
Read moreFitch Ratings has warned that Colombia's electricity system will face heightened reliability pressure in the second half of 2026, with tightening supply-demand margins raising the risk of rationing if El Niño conditions materialize as projected.
Read moreThe governors of Córdoba, Atlántico, and Sucre signed the Plan Caribe Energético 2026-2030 on June 13, a regional energy roadmap developed through the Caribbean Regional Administrative Planning Body (RAP Caribe) in coordination with industry associations, energy companies, and technical experts.
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A diplomatic and commercial spat between Colombia and Ecuador spilled into the energy arena in late May, when President Gustavo Petro used his X account to signal that Colombia would be willing to resume electricity exports to its southern neighbor -- conditionally.
Read morePresident Gustavo Petro's flagship transoceanic railway project has seen its estimated cost nearly double from the CoP$54.6T figure cited by Transport Minister María Fernanda Rojas at a CAF forum last August, reaching CoP$92T according to prefeasibility studies obtained exclusively by Valora Analitik through a freedom-of-information request to the Infrastructure Planning Unit (UPIT).
Read moreEnergy Minister Edwin Palma traveled to Puerto Carreño on June 15 to announce a package of electricity investments for Vichada totaling CoP$89.9B, headlining a proposed bilateral power interconnection with Venezuela and a new 5-MWp solar plant for the departmental capital.
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“El Nino has developed in the tropical Pacific,” says the latest report from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the forecasters expect it to “strengthen”.
Read moreColombia's Senate approved the so-called Ley Nuclear in its fourth and final legislative debate on June 11, sending the bill to the president for signature.
Read moreArgentine energy company Impsa is in advanced negotiations with Venezuelan state utility Corpoelec to revive a long-stalled hydroelectric contract that could add up to 672 MWp of generating capacity to Venezuela's chronically underpowered grid.
Read moreDeutsche Bank and Corficolombiana both published assessments on June 12 framing the same basic question ahead of Colombia's June 21 presidential runoff: what comes after the vote, and how durable will any initial market optimism prove to be?
Read moreThe Ministry of Mines and Energy announced on June 12 the creation of a Special Committee for the coordination and monitoring of El Niño response measures across the energy and mining sector, formalizing an institutional structure to manage the climatic risk the government has been tracking through 36 prior sessions of its CACSSE energy security committee.
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