Everyone knows fossil fuels drive climate breakdown. The problem is that at UN climate summits, even saying so out loud has become difficult. At the last COP, held in Belém, Brazil, two weeks of negotiations ended without fossil fuels being mentioned in the final text.

Colombia, the largest coal exporter in Latin America and fourth largest oil exporter in the Americas, decided not to wait. Together with the Netherlands and more than 50 other countries, it is now hosting a parallel conference in the coastal city of Santa Marta, on April 28 and 29.

The unofficial name says it all: a coalition of the willing. Countries that aren’t ready to move on don’t get a seat at this table

The timing wasn’t planned, but it couldn’t be better. The US-Israeli attack on Iran has sent oil prices surging, pushing up food costs and threatening businesses worldwide. The argument that fossil fuel dependency is a risk, not just an environmental concern, has never been easier to make.

The renewable data backs it up. Outside China, solar generation grew 14% and wind 8%. Record numbers of UK households installed solar panels and heat pumps. Even after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which many feared would trigger a return to coal, the generation from coal fell in the US, India, the EU, Turkey, and South Africa.

The barrier isn’t technological. It never was. It’s political. And that’s exactly what Santa Marta is trying to break through.

The US, China, India, Russia, and Gulf states won’t be there. Some participants, including Norway and Mexico, are actually planning to expand fossil fuel production in response to the current crisis. But the conference isn’t waiting for consensus, it starts where there’s a willingness to act.

The planned output: a scientific report on how countries can make the transition, and a financing document developed by Global South experts. A second edition is already scheduled in Tuvalu, one of the nations most threatened by rising seas.

Fashion Mix Intelectualidade was a pop-up event organized by Michelle Jamur and Cláudia Leal, held from April 8 to 11 at the Breton store in Curitiba, Brazil.

A sustainability talk with Juliana Jabour and guests took place on April 9.

UGREEN’s participation: Ana Julia Kfouri, engineer and partner at UGREEN, was one of the guests at the sustainability talk alongside Juliana. The central theme was sustainable consumption, covering both fashion and construction.

The through line is always the same: remove cooling from fragmented, building-by-building logic, concentrate capacity, gain scale, and turn refrigeration into a continuous service.

Up to this point, it sounds like thermal engineering.

But it isn’t.

What is happening here is a shift in logic. Cooling stops being an equipment choice and becomes an infrastructure decision. And when it happens, the impact goes beyond energy consumption.

It shows up in operational predictability.

It shows up in maintenance.

It shows up in how space is used since the building no longer has to carry part of its own cooling structure.

And it shows up, above all, in risk.

Because an individualized system looks like autonomy. Until it starts multiplying failures, maintenance demands, inefficiencies, and hidden costs across every building.

That’s where UGREEN’s perspective becomes more interesting.

District cooling isn’t a “more sustainable” solution just because it centralizes equipment. It makes sense when there is density, continuity of demand, and real coordination between the assets being served. Without that, the technical case loses its strength. The promise still sounds good, but the real gain shrinks.

In dense urban environments, large-scale operations, and projects built for the long term, centralizing cooling can reduce recurring costs, improve performance, and cut operational risk in ways that isolated systems rarely deliver.

This isn’t aesthetics.

This isn’t green marketing.

It’s infrastructure working better!

The UGREEN Sustainable Home Mentoring has a special April offer available for a limited time!

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It is the complete training that accelerates the process of building sustainable homes through a set of methodologies!

You will learn how to apply sustainability techniques in an accessible way and with real cost reduction.

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In 1994, an entire city was demolished in Hong Kong. Between 35,000 and 50,000 people were packed into a tiny area. Buildings reached 14 stories and pressed against each other to form one continuous block. Many apartments had no windows at all.

Streets were less than 2 meters wide, and the population density was more than five times that of New York City.

The place was called Kowloon, and no one planned it. It grew from three forces colliding at once: capitalism, colonialism, and social exclusion.

The territory became trapped between China and the UK after a colonial treaty in 1898. When the Chinese Civil War drove millions of people into the region, they went to the only place where there was no government oversight and no police.

Without a state, the triads took control. But when their power weakened in the 1980s, the community organized itself. Residents built informal schools, daycare centers, waste collection systems, and fire brigades.

The city functioned. It was unhealthy, violent in parts, but it had an internal logic. And that logic says a lot about what happens when government abandons a place.

Watch the full video on YouTube and see how this city came to be, how people lived there, and what it reveals about our cities today!

Disclaimer: The video is in Brazilian Portuguese, but simultaneous translation and subtitles are available in multiple languages.