By Juan Daniel Correa Salazar
Clean Energy / Energía Limpia
www.cleanenergyplanet.org
There are events that simply bring people together.
And there are a few that bring together the people who are actually changing the world.
ChangeNOW 2026 belongs firmly in the second group.
From 30 March to 1 April 2026, the Grand Palais in Paris will once again host the world’s leading summit for planet-positive solutions — three days where innovators, scientists, artists, policymakers, entrepreneurs, community leaders, investors and dreamers converge around a shared purpose: building a future that works, not in theory, but in practice.
For us at Clean Energy / Energía Limpia, ChangeNOW has become more than a summit — it is a way of understanding the world. A way of engaging with solutions, with people, with ideas, and with durabilité — a French word that carries a feeling as much as a meaning: sustainability not as a passing trend, but as something built to endure, steady enough to hold, genuine enough to last. A way of working that stays with you.
That is why we will be there again.
We were present in 2024.
We evolved in 2025, when we introduced our renewed global platform in Paris.
And we return in 2026 — eyes open, mind awake — to continue connecting Latin America with the world, and the world with Latin America.
1. The Planet Beyond Safe Boundaries — and the Window Still Open
By 2025, seven of the nine planetary boundaries recognized by Earth system science have been exceeded. Humanity is operating beyond its historic “safe operating space”. The implications are serious: climate instability, biodiversity loss, altered land use, and disruptions that cascade through ecosystems and societies.
And yet, that is not the full story.
Across continents, thousands of solutions are emerging — practical, scalable, imaginative — offering a genuine chance to redirect our trajectory. Renewable energy is expanding faster than predicted. Circular materials are reshaping industries. Community-led conservation is protecting forests. Regenerative agriculture is healing soils. Governance innovation is strengthening trust. Cities are experimenting. Youth are organizing. Scientists are providing clarity. Cultural movements are shifting mindsets.
ChangeNOW is where these pieces meet and take shape as collective momentum.
2. The Grand Palais as a Temporary City of Solutions
During ChangeNOW, the Grand Palais becomes something unique: a living, breathing ecosystem of ideas.
You walk inside and see an energy specialist speaking with a fashion designer. A climate scientist learning from an Indigenous guardian of the forest. A mayor exchanging ideas with a teenager working on AI for climate truth. A Saudi circularity expert in conversation with a Colombian writer and entrepreneur exploring regenerative projects across Latin America. A startup founder pitching next to a coral-reef protector, a health communicator, a peace activist or a materials innovator.
This is the magic: París is the location. People are the engine. Solutions are the language.
In 2026, the program will focus strongly on climate adaptation, mitigation, democratic innovation, governance models that accelerate transitions, and — crucially — social acceptability. Because no solution, however brilliant, succeeds without aligning with people’s realities, fears, hopes and needs.
ChangeNOW treats sustainability not as a slogan but as a craft — built with rigor, transparency and collaboration.
3. From COP16 to COP30 and Into Paris: Land, Climate and a Colombian Perspective
COP16 was held in Colombia — and unlike other global conferences, it unfolded in a country where land restoration, water governance and biodiversity are lived, daily realities, not abstract frameworks. Seen through Colombian eyes, the summit revealed both progress and limitation. There were important advances in recognizing territories and community-led solutions, yet too often the conversation became hostage to politics. And the truth is simple: the climate and biodiversity crises will not be solved in speeches. They will be solved in territory — with real action, real data and real collaboration.
That is why civil society and communities — the people who live on the land, protect forests, grow food, manage water and sustain territories — must remain at the center of any global agenda, whether inside a COP hall or far from one.
Then came Belém. At COP30 — the climate COP — the Amazon itself shaped the summit. The forest spoke with clarity; politics responded with noise. I explored this tension in detail in COP30 Belém: When the Amazon Spoke Clearly and the World Answered with Noise, a reflection on how territory, science and political contradiction collided in the heart of the rainforest.
Belém made one thing unmistakable: forests, food systems, Indigenous knowledge and land-use decisions are not peripheral themes — they are the core of climate reality. And Latin America feels this more directly than most.
In that context, ChangeNOW 2026 does not replace global negotiations, nor does it pretend to. Its value lies elsewhere: it is not a government affair, but a planetary one. A space where innovators, scientists, communities, entrepreneurs and cities can meet without the constraints of state diplomacy. A place where ideas are tested against solutions, where disagreement refines perspective, and where the climate conversation reconnects with the people and territories most affected.
For Colombia — and for Latin America — these dialogues are not symbolic. They are immediate. Territorial. Urgent. Because our region knows something essential: the future is not declared; it is built. And it is built on the ground.
4. Darah Solutions, Colombia, and the Meaning of Connection
If ChangeNOW had a single defining value, it would be this: connection.
When we published our feature on Darah Solutions Lab, a circular fashion initiative from Saudi Arabia, it became clear that what emerged there was far more than a story about textiles. It was a story about how unlikely encounters generate new pathways — between continents, cultures and industries. (Read the feature here: Darah Solutions Lab – Circular Fashion for a New Era)
The power of that meeting — sparked around ChangeNOW — was its natural ease. Purposeful, effortless, rooted in curiosity. Darah’s work resonated unexpectedly with Latin American creativity, with our festivals, our cultural industries and our own circularity efforts.
And that is precisely what ChangeNOW does: It creates the conditions for meaningful collisions — the kind that move ideas across borders and allow them to grow.
5. Durabilité: Sustainability That Endures
The idea of durabilité emerged with clarity during ChangeNOW 2025. While sustainability and sostenibilidad — words that share not only the same root but essentially the same sound in English and Spanish — convey responsibility and environmental intention, the French notion adds something essential: continuity. Durabilité does not simply aim for positive impact; it requires that such impact be built to endure.
It carries the expectation that solutions must withstand time, changing conditions and shifting priorities. It ties sustainability to longevity — to structures built with enough coherence and resilience to outlast the moment in which they are introduced.
For Clean Energy / Energía Limpia, this nuance was transformative. It reminded us that true progress is not measured by novelty or speed, but by durability: the capacity of an idea to remain meaningful after the spotlight moves on, to cross institutions and generations without losing its purpose.
Latin America embodies this paradox. Our ecosystems and ancestral knowledge are among the world’s most enduring, yet many decisions in the region unfold in short cycles that conflict with long-term needs. Durabilité names that tension — and invites us to bridge it.
As we prepare for ChangeNOW 2026, this lens becomes essential. Because change matters, but only what endures can truly transform.
Innovation booths, mobility prototypes (including emerging flying solutions) and climate-tech initiatives at ChangeNOW 2025 — a glimpse of the ecosystem where global ideas meet practical impact.
6. Clean Energy: The Transition That Is Shaping Our Future
When our platform evolved from Clean Energy for Colombia to simply Clean Energy during ChangeNOW 2025, it was more than a new name. It reflected the reality of the moment: the energy transition is global, interconnected and accelerating — and we chose to speak to it from that scale.
The numbers are decisive.
In 2024, the world added 585 GW of renewable energy, the largest increase ever recorded, pushing global capacity beyond 4,400 GW. Clean electricity surpassed 40% of global power generation in 2025, and by 2030 the world could add another 4,600 GW. Solar, now the cheapest source of electricity in history, is transforming markets at a pace unmatched by any previous industrial shift.
But expansion is only meaningful if the system can hold it.
The real frontier is now storage, transmission, flexibility, regulation and digitalization — the architecture that determines whether renewables become the backbone of modern economies or remain constrained by outdated infrastructure.
Latin America stands inside this transformation.
Our region is experiencing what we described in our analysis of the Future Energy Summit (FES Colombia and FES Chile 2025) as a moment of positive tension — a point where ambition meets structural challenge, and where genuine progress depends on the ability to think beyond short cycles and act with long-term coherence. Chile is already operating gigawatts of battery storage; Colombia is shaping the regulatory architecture that will allow its own system to evolve. This dynamic is explored in depth in our feature Latin America in Positive Tension: What FES Colombia and FES Chile 2025 Left Behind.
The lesson is clear: Latin America has the potential to lead, not follow. But leadership requires continuity — technical, institutional and cultural.
This is where ChangeNOW 2026 becomes essential. Because energy is not a standalone sector: it is the structure that supports biodiversity, food systems, mobility, cities, industry, circularity and climate resilience. In Paris, these intersections stop being theoretical and become partnerships, prototypes, pilots and commitments.
Clean energy is no longer about adding megawatts. It is about direction, durability and coherence — the ability to build systems that endure.
And that is why Clean Energy / Energía Limpia returns to ChangeNOW 2026: to help translate complexity into clarity, to connect Latin America with the world and the world with Latin America, and to contribute to a transition that must not only accelerate — it must endure.
The shift is already underway.
Its future will be defined by what we choose to build now.
7. What to Expect in 2026 — and Why It Matters
ChangeNOW 2026 arrives at a moment defined by deep challenges, but also by an extraordinary convergence of solutions capable of reshaping systems rather than symptoms. The summit reflects that shift.
We can expect a more integrated program, one that brings together energy, biodiversity, food systems, cities, circularity, mobility, governance and culture — not as parallel tracks, but as interdependent dimensions of a single planetary reality.
Adaptation and resilience will take center stage. Climate impacts are no longer projections; they are the conditions we now inhabit. The need for ingenuity, sound governance and long-term planning has never been more urgent.
Land restoration will remain a global priority, informed by COP processes, community leadership, scientific evidence and new models of public–private collaboration.
Most importantly, the conversation will remain plural. Policymakers and Indigenous leaders, investors and youth, scientists and artists, businesses and NGOs — all participating from their own expertise and lived experience. ChangeNOW is one of the few spaces where disagreement becomes productive and imagination becomes policy.
But perhaps the most distinctive expectation is the atmosphere that defines the summit: honest dialogue, rigorous thinking, bold creativity and optimism grounded in work, not wishful narratives.
8. Clean Energy / Energía Limpia: A Bridge Between Worlds
When our platform became simply Clean Energy in April 2025 at ChangeNOW, we embraced a wider mission: to connect regions, translate complexity and tell the story of sustainability with clarity, evidence and cultural grounding.
Our role remains clear:
To listen deeply.
To observe rigorously.
To communicate responsibly.
To connect Latin America with global networks of innovation.
To amplify regional voices shaping the future of forests, cities, oceans, soils, communities and industries.
To support those ready to exhibit, pitch, volunteer or learn as they navigate one of the world’s most important solution-driven events.
We do not claim to save the world.
But we believe in improving it — steadily, collaboratively, with genuine commitment.
ChangeNOW is one of the few places where that belief becomes visible, shared and actionable.
9. Looking Ahead
Whether you join ChangeNOW 2026 as a speaker, exhibitor, volunteer, journalist or observer, the summit offers something essential: the experience of belonging to a global community united by solutions.
And even from afar, participation remains real — in the way we learn, question, exchange, collaborate and bring ideas home. The work does not begin in Paris, nor does it end there. It expands through networks, territories, industries and stories that continue long after the lights of the Grand Palais dim.
For us at Clean Energy, ChangeNOW is not merely an event. It has become a practice — a way of understanding the world through continuity rather than spectacle; through rigor rather than noise; through alliances capable of lasting, evolving and grounding ambition in the long term.
It reminds us that durable transformation emerges from patient, interconnected effort: from science and creativity, from local knowledge and global insight, from dialogue that holds tension without breaking.
This is the path we choose.
We return to Paris with open eyes and steady purpose — to listen deeply, to connect honestly, to translate complexity into clarity, and to help bridge Latin America with the world and the world with Latin America.
We will be there.
And if you are somewhere on this same journey — seeking to build, to understand, to contribute — then our paths, inevitably, will cross.
— Juan Daniel Correa Salazar
Director, Clean Energy / Energía Limpia
www.cleanenergyplanet.org
The iconic ChangeNOW emblem beneath the glass vault of the Grand Palais — a symbol of the global community working to turn solutions into lasting change.
Bibliography / Sources Consulted
Planetary Boundaries & Global Context
- Stockholm Resilience Centre – Planetary Boundaries Framework
- Earth Commission Reports on Safe and Just Operating Space
- Global environmental assessments by leading scientific bodies
Energy Transition (Global Data & Trends)
- International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – Global Renewables Outlook
- International Energy Agency (IEA) – Renewables 2025 and Electricity Market Reports
- Ember – Global Electricity Review 2025
- Public data on global storage, transmission and efficiency trends
ChangeNOW 2026 Official Information
- ChangeNOW Newsletter & Press Materials (Dec 2025)
- ChangeNOW 2026 Website – Program, Themes & Speakers
- Proceedings and media from ChangeNOW 2024–2025
COP Processes and Land Restoration
- UNCCD COP16 – Business4Land Initiative
- Reports from the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
- COP30 Brazil outcomes on forests, food systems and Indigenous governance
Energía Limpia / Clean Energy Prior Work
- Reflections on Change Now 2025 and Sustainability – Clean Energy / Energía Limpia
- Circular Fashion and Textile Sustainability from Saudi Arabia to Latin America – Darah Solutions Lab on Clean Energy – Clean Energy / Energía Limpia
- Latin America in Positive Tension: What FES Colombia and FES Chile 2025 Left Behind – Clean Energy / Energía Limpia
- Analyses on energy transition, circularity, climate governance and biodiversity
- Fieldwork and reporting during ChangeNOW 2024–2025
Additional Perspectives Consulted
- ClientEarth, Parley for the Oceans, Coral Catch, Elman Peace Centre – public materials
- Research on democratic innovation and climate acceptability
- International reports on adaptation, mitigation and resilience
