Although Gihembe was established for almost a quarter of a century, the camp’s closure underscores the fundamental issues of time and transience that are often the greatest challenge for investment by businesses and private sector enterprise in refugee settings. How can the humanitarian sector provide the right guarantees or conditions that allow businesses to be happy with the balance of risk and reward? In the case of Gihembe, the focus on transportable assets such as cookstoves and solar home systems proved valuable, given the relatively short notice of closure. Such a focus does however limit the scope for genuinely transformative infrastructure.
Grid extension and policy uncertainty
In several countries around the world, proposed (and partially funded) mini-grids have had to be abandoned. The Moving Energy Initiative was unable to proceed with a mini-grid project in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, partly because of the newly established diesel mini-grid that was inaugurated in Kakuma town in 2018, and partly because of the proposed extension of the national grid to Kakuma camp (discussed in 2018 but still not done). In Rwanda, the RE4R project was forced to move away from the idea of a mini-grid in Nyabiheke refugee camp because of proposed grid extension plans (described in more detail in Box 6). In Ethiopia, NRC have been unable to install solar street lighting in camps in the north of the country due to suggested grid expansion plans (which have also not been forthcoming).
In all of these examples, governments have been supportive of the off-grid sector and have rural electrification strategies that embrace off-grid approaches, but policy uncertainty about when – and whether – grid expansion will take place has caused significant delays, and has discouraged private capital that could have achieved results faster. In Rwanda, the electrification plan is clear in showing how the grid is reaching areas with refugee settlements; however, agencies and companies considering solar mini-grid roll-out have been unclear as to whether the grid will be connected to settlements, and under what time frame.
Clean cooking: the highest-hanging fruit
Many projects begin with the idea of tackling the lowest-hanging fruit – i.e. the task that a team or employee can easily and quickly complete. Successful projects that deliver verifiable impacts are a powerful means to inspire governments in other countries, along with humanitarian and/or development partners, to understand and replicate this success. But in the area of humanitarian energy, sustainable clean cooking projects have proved among the hardest to execute, deliver and scale. While the humanitarian community has been working on this issue longer than on any other energy problem, addressing it in an economically sustainable manner is complex and fraught with pitfalls – as the experience with Inyenyeri shows in Rwanda.
Although cooking appears less reliant on public infrastructure or approvals, local policy, the price of fuels and government willingness to support clean cooking initiatives may be even more important to project success. If governments hosting displaced persons have, for example, a clear ambition to expand the market for LPG, then it makes sense for the humanitarian sector to work with this. In Niger, UNHCR set up a partnership with the country’s government and SONIHY (a private Nigerien gas distribution company) in the Diffa region that brought LPG to the refugee population. The SEED project (Soutien Energétique et Environnemental dans la région de Diffa) reduced air pollution impacts, reduced deforestation caused by a reliance on wood fuel, and drew on supply chains and local businesses that were already well established in the region. Furthermore, 70 per cent of the 25,000 UNHCR-supported households continued to purchase LPG with no subsidy or other support after the programme formally closed; and in the first 15 months alone, the full amount of EU funding for SEED (around €2 million) was recovered in savings from fuel purchases by people living in the region.
In Tanzania, by contrast, the implementation of a government-endorsed LPG market creation project has been beset by policy contradictions; among these has been the suspension of the common market that is crucial to establishing the links between host and refugee communities that are necessary to the success of any energy intervention. A more fundamental uncertainty has been created by overall government policy on hosting refugees, which has grown more hostile since Tanzania’s withdrawal from the CRRF.
Creating access to clean cooking technologies is the main energy-related challenge in low-income countries, with multiple social and environmental impacts that are often more pronounced in humanitarian settings. It is also the most protracted issue, generally approached and treated as a separate and unrelated issue to electricity access by policymakers and project developers. However, advances in PV and battery technology now make the prospect of solar e-cooking an increasingly viable option, which could disrupt the market and deliver solutions for both access to electricity and clean cooking. For example, the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme, based at Loughborough University, is working with SNV Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and UNHCR to deploy electric pressure cookers in schools and health centres in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
Understanding what, when and where
The case studies reveal very different contexts and approaches towards exerting control and coordination over energy and environmental projects. Nonetheless – much as in the wider humanitarian sector – a lack of interagency (and sometimes intra-agency) coordination has led to policy pressures, tensions and contradictions.
Jordan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda all have policies in which the national government exerts relatively tight control over the humanitarian energy projects taking place within the country. Such systems may seem clearer and easier to navigate for would-be implementers of humanitarian energy projects, but the bureaucracy involved in creating these systems can inhibit bottom-up initiatives and engagement.
In Ethiopia, however, there is greater interaction between humanitarian organizations and provincial and local authorities, which have greater autonomy over energy access policy and projects. Having national policies requires capacity, finance and will – and in cases of overstretched or under-resourced governments, international organizations often take a bigger role in decision-making and oversight of humanitarian energy projects. In Ethiopia, many decisions are taken by UNHCR and other camp-level managers. This allows humanitarian and development agencies (and partnerships like Alianza Shire) to take the lead in pushing forward progressive policy. At the same time, the policy environment has also led to confusion and delay when action is needed from government bodies.
Paying for better solutions
UNHCR and other lead humanitarian agencies have limited technical capacity on issues related to energy and environment. Funding for such issues is often absent or extremely limited. Short-term, politically oriented humanitarian funding is poorly suited to financing longer-term energy solutions in protracted crises and recovery situations. Humanitarian agency planning and budgets are generally annual, with few incentives to make longer-term investments. No formal cluster of agencies is responsible for energy provision in emergencies, in contrast to other basic needs such as food, water, shelter and health. As a result, donors are not presented with energy as a strategic priority. This restricts funding opportunities and impairs energy programme prioritization and coordination. All of the case studies had response plans that seek to address the lack of focus on sustainable energy by drawing out a coherent narrative on the projects and issues they would like to address, but – as examined in Chapter 4 – the success of such response plans is still open to question.
In rolling out its Global Strategy for Sustainable Energy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNHCR is prioritizing operations where there are plans to strengthen health infrastructure and/or where existing power supplies are insufficient, unstable or overly expensive, and where governments have already prioritized plans for investment in energy access for refugee-affected areas. Specifically, UNHCR is pursuing work that will lead to the development of new energy access projects that are:
- Aligned with the objectives of UNHCR’s Clean Energy Challenge, which seeks to produce a pipeline of clean energy access projects for investment;
- Empirically informed, with underlying fact-based analysis;
- Private sector-led, or demonstrating clear economic sustainability;
- Co-designed by end-users, target beneficiaries and local authorities.
Systematic and large-scale financing for these projects is the crucial last leg in the journey from ‘assessment to investment’, and replaces a more ad hoc set-up that has largely failed to deliver change on the ground, despite a long history of global humanitarian energy strategies and targets.
Global sources of climate finance would help to enable implementation of humanitarian sustainability strategies alongside the ambitions of progressive refugee-hosting countries. At present, however, most agencies do not have accreditation with the main climate finance institutions, as shown in Table 2:
