The Politics of Sustainable Energy Transition in Refugee Settlements

My proposed research project aims at increasing our understanding of the barriers to sustainable energy transition in forced displacement settings, developing a framework to guide energy actors and researchers to identify and address these barriers, and increasing our understanding of the contested concept of sustainability in the context of humanitarian energy. Problems like carbon emissions, health hazards, and gender-based violence due to unsustainable energy practices by refugee households in the global south point to the need for humanitarian actors and host governments to make deliberate efforts to support clean energy transition in refugee camps. The existing energy interventions are often led by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) focusing on increasing household access to improved cookstoves and mini solar panels for lighting and for business, often with low and short-lived uptake. This has left the vast majority of refugee households with no access to these technologies, leading to a protracted energy poverty situation, which further exacerbates the vulnerability of forcibly displaced households. To address this energy poverty situation, it is necessary to know what barriers exist, where, and how we can overcome them. This way,humanitarian agencies and host governments will more effectively develop energy programmes for refugees and host communities. To achieve the research objectives, I propose to collect primary data in Uganda and Kenya, focusing specifically on the market systems within which improved biomass cookstoves are produced and distributed by energy actors, and used by refugees. I will split the market systems into three levels: the market, the household, and the community. Each of these three levels is represented by a set of key stakeholders. At the market level, I will map out organisations implementing energy projects and conduct interviews with energy actors and government officials. At the household level, I will interact with selected household heads to understand the barriers they face to access clean energy products and services with a particular focus on how they value clean cookstoves and what attributes of the cookstoves are most important to them. Lastly, at the community level, I will conduct focus group discussions to explore how community members' existing social interactions influence adoption or non-adoption of the improved cookstoves.