Newsletter: Looking back - 2024 Year in Review

Looking back - 2024 Year in Review

As we embark on an exciting year ahead, it’s important to reflect on the state of the world and key moments from the past year in our journey to bring about lasting change.

We continue to live in uncertain times. The past year saw the outbreak or continuation of numerous conflicts, including in Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Haiti, and Myanmar. EPP is supporting projects in some of these regions. As this newsletter goes to press, the security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is rapidly deteriorating, directly affecting the operations of our local partners and the communities whom they support.

The international peace and security architecture, led by the UN Security Council, remains largely paralyzed by disagreements. We have seen a decreasing appetite for multilateralism amid rising global tensions. Despite the increase in violent conflict around the world, resources to promote peace and security are shrinking. The tools we have relied upon to prevent and resolve conflict are limited and seem increasingly out of date.

What is the human cost of these trends? The International Crisis Group observes that “a wave of conflict is adding to a global tally of people dead, displaced, and hungry due to fighting that is higher than at any time in decades.” We have seen the number of people displaced due to conflict - currently over 120 million – almost double in the last seven years. Meanwhile, at least 685 million people still lack access to electricity, the majority of whom live in fragile states. It is communities in these conflict-affected countries who are the most vulnerable to the destructive impacts of climate change, which exacerbates humanitarian crises and the drivers of conflict.

Today’s challenges require fresh thinking and new approaches to promote peace and stability, which are long overdue. In this uncertain landscape, EPP continues to develop solutions to advance our core idea that renewable energy can serve as a building block for peace. Read more below about how our efforts in 2024 contributed to making a modest contribution towards a more peaceful future.

P-REC Program expansion
The Peace Renewable Energy Credit (P-REC) market continued to grow in 2024. P-REC sales to date have unlocked USD1.3 million in support for new projects in six conflict-affected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These include first-time electrification, public streetlights, hospital electrification, and community agriculture productive use projects. Meanwhile, our instrument to scale up the P-REC market – the $11 million P-REC Aggregation Facility – is targeting financial close in 2025. Our efforts to launch the Facility were supported by a grant from the Catalytic Climate Finance Facility. The P-REC Aggregation Facility aims to mobilize $137 million in additional funding for new renewable projects in fragile, energy poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa and connect more than 850,000 million people to first-time electricity access. To increase P-REC demand, we expanded the services and resources available to P-REC buyers, including creating the “Experienced P-REC Seller” badge for advisory firms, releasing guidance on incorporating P-RECs into corporate RFP processes, publishing research on the relationship between corporate value chains in fragile countries, highlighting profiles of P-REC project developers, and attracting demand from new sources. EPP also contributed to the establishment of the architecture enabling the issuance of P-RECs from Myanmar.

Research and Advocacy
Publications to which we contributed included A Case Study in Improving Environmental Management in UN Peacekeeping and Peacekeeping and Clean Energy: Can C limate and Development Goals Align in Fragile States? We also partnered with the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and the Clingendael Institute on Why Renewable Energy Matters in Policy Brief the Context of Peace and Stability and the convening of events during Climate Week in New York and at COP 29 in Baku to advance the renewable energy and peace agenda among a wider group of stakeholders. Meanwhile, research for our report on the Central African Republic (CAR) was completed and will be published in early 2025. The report will examine the intersection of energy and conflict in CAR and opportunities for the introduction of renewables, including entry points for support by the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (MINUSCA). This will be the fifth in our Powering Peace series of country reports following a similar analytical template, published together with our partners at the Stimson Center and The Dickey Center at Dartmouth. Since 2019, these reports have contributed to UN peacekeeping and member states prioritizing renewable energy transitions in field missions.
Peace Impacts of Renewable Energy
In collaboration with our project developer partners and Leonardo, we continued to collect a unique emerging data set on the peace and social impacts of P-REC-supported renewable energy projects. Community surveys to collect baseline and/or follow on data were undertaken in Chad, DRC, Somalia, and South Sudan in 2024.
Leapfrog Alliance Launch
We launched the Leapfrog Alliance, a nonprofit-led initiative to promote stronger incentives to increase corporate investment in clean energy access in unelectrified and underelectrified communities globally. This coalition, which currently includes 16 diverse nonprofit organizations, seeks to strengthen the incentive structure embedded in corporate environmental accounting frameworks to drive increased and dedicated corporate investment in clean energy projects benefiting these communities.

Participation in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Technical Working Group
EPP Program Director Linda Wamune was invited by the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Secretariat and Independent Standards Board to participate in the GHG Protocol standards revision process as a member of the Scope 2 Technical Working Group. Linda represents one of the few African voices contributing to the revision process for these global standards. Her participation provides an entry point for EPP to contribute our perspective on how the standards can better incorporate social impact and energy equity considerations.

Expansion of EPP team
The EPP team continued to expand. Lindsey Padjen joined us as Development Manager. Lindsey will contribute to ensuring that our fundraising and resource mobilization efforts are aligned with our ambitions for growth and impact. Pius Okaron joined EPP’s Nairobi office as Project Associate. Pius will be responsible for coordinating and facilitating technical and administrative aspects of projects within our P-REC program.

EPP in the world: Our team represented EPP in multiple fora over the year, including COP29, Verge24, International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding (EnPax), Energy Access Investment Forum, Clean Energy Buyer's Association (CEBA) Summit, REC Market Meeting in Amsterdam, and more. We also continued to reach virtual audiences through webinars organized with partners like SEforALL, including Scaling Investments at the Nexus of Climate, ESG, Energy Access, and State Fragility.