Meeting basic needs of life – how to provide refugee camps with electricity?

It is possible to provide refugees living in camps with clean and reliable energy, according to a study by energy scientists at Utrecht University (UU) and the Joint Research Centre-European Commission (JRC-EC). To meet the basic needs of life, the UN aims to provide all refugee camps with reliable and safe energy by 2030. One of the minorities for whom access to energy is difficult, and sometimes even dangerous, are refugees living in African camps. “With this research, we estimated the environmental benefit and overall costs of providing clean electricity access to almost 5 million refugees living in 300 refugee camps across Africa,” says Dr. Elena Fumagalli, co-author of the publication that came out today in Nature Energy.

Reliable and clean energy for all has been a UN development goal since the beginning of the century. Refugee camps were often not included in the efforts related to this goal because they were considered temporary. "However, literature shows that refugees spend an average of 17 years in a refugee camp," said Fumagalli. This is why the UN has also focused on refugee camps since 2019. "To achieve this goal, the UN faces a huge knowledge gap. That's where we come in as energy scientists," Fumagalli explains. The publication is a joint effort of UU researchers Duccio Baldi, Elena Fumagalli, and JRC-EC researchers Magda Moner and Fernando Fahl.

Duccio Baldi, a researcher on the project and first author of the paper, travelled to Kalobeyei, a large refugee camp in Kenya. “I found that it’s not just about having a place to charge your phone, or having a fridge. It’s about very simple things like a light so you can check your cabin for poisonous scorpions before going to bed, or creating the possibility for your children to study when the sun has set. It’s about safety and having a future,” says Baldi.

He conducted more than 300 interviews there to get an idea of the electricity demand of such a camp. Using Baldi's data and a model developed for the study, the researchers could determine the optimal size of a so-called mini-grid. Mini-grids are electric power generators and distribution systems that can provide energy to remote settlements such as refugee camps. Based on the findings of the research, an existing mini-grid based on renewable energy was expanded according to the growing electricity needs of the refugees. This was accomplished through a collaboration between academics, energy company Renewvia Energy Kenya Limited, the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) and local Kenyan authorities.

Win-win-win

"Local populations living around refugee camps in sub-Sharan Africa often also face the problem of limited access to electricity," says Fumagalli, "So when supplying a refugee camp with electricity, the same service should become available for the local population as well. In this way both refugees and the local population can access electricity-dependant services like healthcare and micro-businesses located in the same area. And if refugees leave, the local population will continue to benefit from improved living conditions. Also, due to its modular nature, the mini-grid is easily adapted to changes in the electricity demand. Finally, by using solar panels and thus renewable energy, mini-grids also contribute to UN environmental goals.”

Conflicts due to scarcity

To meet their energy needs now, most refugees living in camps use biomass for cooking. "It is usually women who collect the wood, meaning they are less likely to be able to attend school or have an income. Also, wood is a scarce resource which regularly causes conflicts," says Fumagalli. "We are working hard to obtain funding for follow-up research. Here, we want to focus more on the social aspects of energy scarcity."