07 – What do we know about humanitarian energy?

What is humanitarian energy and how does it operate in the contexts of displacement? In this third episode of the Humanitarianism and Transitions to a Low-Carbon Future miniseries, Ekatherina Zhukova, Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, and Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen, Research Fellow at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, explore the current state of access to electricity in humanitarian settings and who the providers of energy to refugees are.  Based on Rosenberg-Jansen’s academic and practitioner work at the international NGO Practical Action, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID), and the Global Platform for Action for Sustainable Energy Solutions in Situations of Displacement (GPA), this episode discusses how humanitarian organisations are not the main providers of energy access in displacement contexts, but rather the main providers are refugees themselves through local markets and the private sector. Zhukova and Rosenberg-Jansen also explore possible radical options and progressive pathways for humanitarian energy action and the differences in energy provision during short-term and long-term displacement.