Powering Peace: Charting a Future for Peace and Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is demonstrating its potential as a tool for efforts to sustain peace, especially in conflict-affected communities where it can have lifesaving impacts. Distributed renewable energy can support economic development; enable access to better health, education, safety, and employment outcomes; and promote resilience. Furthermore, it can lower insecurity and reduce challenges posed by reliance on fossil fuels in states that import diesel or face issues with oil and gas resource extraction.

That potential, however, needs to be unlocked by expertise across many sectors coming together. Advancing a deeper shared perspective across varied stakeholder communities to identify specific policy goals can help advance renewable energy projects in fragile settings. For those focused on climate change and energy access, for example, working with energy practitioners and peacebuilding experts can identify approaches that are sustainable and could reduce conflict, as well as improve resilience to the impacts of climate change. For peacebuilders, renewable energy can be a tool to improve conflict resolution as well as a way to connect to climate and energy-related funding mechanisms. In addition, case studies and field reports from researchers, funders, project developers, and peacebuilders are powerful ways to see a connection across these sectors and identify new options for policy communities.

The overarching goals for this conference are to:

• Convene leaders with diverse expertise to identify pathways and partnerships for increasing access to renewable energy in conflict-affected settings;
• Identify optimal settings and contexts where renewable energy can act as a tool for peacebuilding;
• Share experiences to advance pilot projects for a renewable energy and peace strategy; and
• Create a research and policy community to develop a roadmap for operationalizing these efforts through analysis, advocacy, and catalyzing investment.