Question: What are effective institutional/governance mechanisms for delivery and implementation of sustainable energy services in refugee camps?

The central issue that my research seeks to address is the challenge of humanitarian energy. With a growing incidence of humanitarian crisis across the world, which is projected to continue to increase as a result of the impacts of climate change, the refugee population is only getting bigger. Providing energy services for displaced populations represents an important opportunity to mitigate some of the worst impacts of displacement and provide more durable solutions more in line with the principles of the Geneva convention and the declaration of human rights as well as the sustainable development goals.
My research will look at the provision of sustainable energy services in refugee camps. It will seek to understand how the specific contextual factors of a refugee camp pose specific governance challenges to sustainable long-term use of energy infrastructure. It will look at the specific challenges that are associated with renewable energy as a resource, renewable energy infrastructure as a technology and refugee camps as a socio-political environment.
Focusing on the specific scenario of renewable energy infrastructure in refugee camps my research will first aim to understand specific governance challenges, second define and analyze current approaches to humanitarian energy governance and finally propose some specific policy recommendations to practitioners working on the issue of energy infrastructure in refugee camps. However, with an understanding and an acceptance of the inherently complex and uncertain contexts in which this issue will be dealt with my research will not propose a blueprint solution but instead, take a systems approach to the issue and consider the system in which energy solutions are delivered to define an effective response.
To support a deeper understanding of humanitarian energy delivery that can be applied to a diverse range of cases, my research will aim to build a more structured understanding of humanitarian energy delivery based on a case study approach. Using a range of case studies, the research will try to understand common approaches and arrangements in humanitarian energy and subsequently define them and critically examine them. The result will hopefully be a preliminary framework that looks at important system properties and dynamics that when applied to different cases can help us understand what appropriate governance mechanisms are for the specific case at hand. This framework is intended to have practical value and will be a tool for practitioners and users to think about institutional structures and governance mechanisms. It will aim to both answer practical and academic questions around the most effective approach to sustainable management of RE infrastructure in camps.