Renewable energy, violent conflict, and gender equality: Exploring a triple nexus on a case study of Yemen

The decarbonization of economy is happening at a time of increased conflicts, but the relationship between renewable energy and conflict is poorly understood.

This 4-year project looks at energy-conflict nexus from a gendered perspective since both conflict and renewables disproportionally affect women.

Feminist foreign policies carry potential to address the energy-conflict nexus, and the project provides analysis that can inform cross-sectoral development programming.

We design a crisis as opening and closure framework to understand how a conflict enables the introduction of renewable energy, how renewable energy affects women in conflict, and how donors influence energy transitions in conflict.

We combine theories of conflict fragmentation and cohesion, gender empowerment, and energy justice to identify socio-technical and political conditions of a conflict state, material and symbolic means of achieving gender-inclusive energy, and justice aspects of donor supported projects.

We use Yemen as a case study, a conflict state with the most precarious status of women in the world, where solar infrastructure has gone from negligible to reaching 50% of rural and 70% of urban households since 2015.

Using a mixed methods approach, the multidisciplinary team combines stakeholder involvement, survey data, field observations, interviews with local residents, and expert interviews with donors and actors implementing renewable energy projects at two sites in Yemen (Aden and Sana’a).