Date and time: TUESDAY 12 Septemer 2023, 1pm-1.45pm (CEST)
DESCRIPTION
This lecture touches on two topics that are often neglected in the field of human rights & the environment: energy justice and energy storage. It aims to bridge their policy divide, which is largely due to their complexities and context-specific features. It will do so by engaging attendants in an interactive lecture, which is based on concrete examples and best practices of the role of storage for energy justice around the world.
Energy storage is a crucial piece of the decarbonization puzzle. It enables the use of intermittent renewable energy (RE) by storing electricity and making it available when it is needed most. Acting as a balance between supply and demand, storage stabilizes both on-grid and off-grid networks. Moreover, storage can dramatically enhance energy justice by ramping up the reliability of RE sources and offering credible just transitions away from fossil fuels. In energy justice terms, RE storage can increase the economic and social participation in the energy system of all communities, especially frontline communities who are disproportionately impacted by the currently dominant extractive energy systems. In this sense, energy storage becomes a leverage for a citizen-oriented energy future, where individuals produce and share energy. Because access to finance is one of the main hurdles to this type of bottom-up energy storage, the lecture will focus on finance and energy rights policies by discussing attendants’ view on gender-lens investing and the ecologization of financial institutions. As a result, energy storage can increase access to clean, affordable, and democratically managed energy, increase equality and the effectiveness of institutions, in line with the SDGs.
LECTURER
Dr. Esmeralda Colombo, Esq., Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoc; Policy and Public Funding Manager, RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE); Smartenergy Srl.
SUGGESTED READINGS
The Energy Justice Workbook, https://iejusa.org/workbook/, Executive Summary (2 pages)
ECOWAS case study (half page): https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Jan/IRENA_Gender_perspective_2019.pdf, p. 67: The case of ECOWAS
RESCOOP case study (one page): https://sustainable-energy-week.ec.europa.eu/news/fringe-mainstream-opportunities-and-risks-thriving-community-energy-movement-2023-04-06_en
CARIBANK case study (three pages): https://www.caribank.org/sites/default/files/publication-resources/CDB8_INTEGRATING%20GENDER%20EQUALITY%20INTO%20THE%20ENERGY%20SECTOR_final.pdf