Los retos jurídicos de la transición energética en la contratación pública colombiana

Abstract

The energy transition has become a priority for the Colombian State within the framework of environmental protection and sustainable development. For this reason, public procurement serves as a key instrument for the materialization and implementation of policies aimed at promoting clean energy, ensuring energy sustainability, and fostering technological creation and innovation. Nevertheless, the development and incorporation of these criteria into public procurement processes give rise to significant legal challenges. These challenges require maintaining coherence between environmental sustainability objectives and the principles governing public procurement, including objective selection, planning, transparency, and fiscal sustainability. Given that energy transition policies involve highly specialized matters and a considerable degree of technical complexity and considering that this is a relatively recent issue in Colombia, their incorporation into public procurement must be approached with heightened legal and technical rigor. An inadequate contractual design or execution may result not only in fiscal liabilities, but also in environmental and social impacts arising from the shift from traditional energy sources to sustainable energy models. This article aims to analyze the legal challenges faced by Colombian public procurement in the context of the energy transition, through the examination of the current regulatory framework, the instrumental role of public procurement, and the function of administrative law principles in the implementation of sustainability policies. Finally, this study highlights the need to move toward a harmonious and evolutionary interpretation of the public procurement regime, one that reconciles the objectives of the energy transition with legality, administrative efficiency, and legal certainty, thereby strengthening public procurement as a legitimate mechanism for economic, social, and environmental transformation.