Scope, methodology and purpose This study has been undertaken by Urban-A for NORCAP to support the acceleration of clean energy across the humanitarian, development, and peace sectors in complex environments and urban response settings. Rather than a technical assessment, this study was carried out to identify opportunities for and the value-add of focusing on clean energy in urban response for NORCAP. The study builds on the EmPowering Africa’s most Vulnerable report published September 2020 (NORCAP and Boston Consulting Group [BCG]), which investigates the deployment of clean energy solutions in Africa in rural and camp-settings. Acknowledging that urban and rural contexts present different challenges, needs, and opportunities, this report adds an urban lens to the conversation. Specifically, the report outlines reasons for and consequences of not having access to reliable, sustainable, or adequate clean energy in urban contexts, with a focus on vulnerable groups including refugees, Internally Displaced People (IDPs), and host communities. For this study, we have looked at the energy situation in urban settings in Kenya, Lebanon, and Syria to nuance and better understand general and placespecific conditions for deployment of clean energy solutions and potential impact on refugee, IDP, and host populations. The case-studies give insight into legal and policy environment, systems, and household vulnerabilities and needs. Further, they illustrate why energy access is important to address multidimensional needs in urban crises settings. Combined, this provides a foundation to identify place-specific and shared approaches to accelerate clean energy provision. We have applied a three-tiered lens for the analysis covering national (political, legal, and regulatory environment), city (systems), and neighbourhood levels (needs and vulnerabilities) (see figure 1). While all three lenses are used to identify and understand relevant capacities, systems, and mechanisms for acceleration of clean energy solutions, the national and city levels are to a greater extent focused on central and local (city) governance, including legal and regulatory frameworks, value-chains, and service provision (or lack thereof). The neighbourhood and community level, on the other hand, focuses more on understanding the unmet and interlinked needs, vulnerabilities, and ways of accessing electricity for people living in poor,
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informal and underprivileged city areas. This spatial approach adds a central dimension when working on energy access in urban areas characterised by complex systems, networks, and linkages within and across scales and geographies. This require an overview of the three levels and how they are linked, regardless of the level at which a specific intervention is being implemented (e.g., the enabling environment, provision of services, or unmet needs of displaced persons in a given area of the city). As further explained in the next section, the threetiered structure corresponds to emerging urban crises response and recovery approaches. For this study, these approaches thus provide both an analytical tool to investigate the role of clean energy across sectors and scales and offers a way to place the work within existing and future crises response agendas.
National level (political and regulatory environment)
City level (systems and value-chains)
Neighbourhood level (needs, vulnerabilities) Figure 1 The three-tiered lens used for this study
