Since the end of the Cold War, United Nations peace operations have adapted continuously to meet new challenges and operate more effectively.* After severe mismatches between UN mission mandates and the capacity of these missions to address intrastate conflicts in the 1990s, such as for missions deployed to Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, and the Balkans, peacekeeping changed to match the demands of the operating environments. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) innovated. New peace operations were authorized with Chapter 7 authority and redesigned to uphold political agreements, protect civilians, and support the rule of law and legitimate governance to prevent a return to conflict. The results were greater success and partnerships between host nations, UN missions, civil society, international organizations, and member states.
That partnership needs revitalization. Many UN missions operate in countries that are affected not only by conflict but by the impacts of climate change and from low access to electricity, an impediment to sustainable development. Those nations seek a stable peace, as well as reduced emissions and increased electrification. Today, peacekeeping missions have an opportunity to partner with their host nations to meet their aims. Rather than continuing their reliance on fossil fuels, missions can seek greater use of renewable energy to meet their mandates more effectively. Further, such a shift by peacekeepers could strengthen their ties to local communities, increase energy access, and support the climate goals of host nations.
This approach is new. Policymakers often overlook energy resources in designing peacekeeping missions in fragile contexts. When missions are first organized, the critical goals are to end conflict, save lives, and support governance; the UNSC and supportive nations are not thinking about the literal need for electricity and the other demands of deploying a new mission, such as operations, bases, logistics, budget, and energy supplies. Yet such logistics and planning are the backbone of a mission’s function and critical for the successful deployment of peacekeepers. Supplying electricity to missions is a basic necessity, particularly in countries that lack functional national grids; yet it can also be a source of innovation. I argue in this essay that missions could increase their use of renewable energy for missions’ electricity, reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, meet mission goals, and support mandate delivery. This approach would align with national and international climate aims, build a bridge to the host nation and population, and leave what the UN refers to as a “positive legacy” of delivering long-term benefits to populations after the missions are complete.Footnote 1
Using renewable energy may seem like an obvious choice. Worldwide, access to renewable energy has accelerated and become more widely available. The International Energy Agency projects that renewable energy will account for nearly half of global electricity by 2030, led by growth in solar photovoltaic and wind.Footnote 2 Yet three factors demonstrate why attention is needed to make renewable energy a priority for peace operations. First, peacekeeping missions’ continued dependence on diesel fuel stems from its large global logistics system. That system was built during an earlier era of peacekeeping growth, before today’s technology and capacity for renewable energy were options. Such systems are hard to change. While diesel is still needed for mobility and flexibility when deploying into insecure areas, many peacekeepers today work on secure bases and in offices where the ability to use renewable energy is an option, from hybrid generators to local solar fields to buying energy from a grid, even in fragile states.
Second, peace operations’ reliance on fossil fuels is strikingly out of step with the goals of the UN and its member states’ pledges to address climate change through more clean energy options, such as under the Paris Agreement. At the 2019 Climate Action Summit, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for radical change as part of a new UN Secretariat Climate Action Plan (UNSCAP), which sets forth guidelines for UN secretariat operations to transition to 80 percent renewable energy usage by 2030 (and 40 percent by 2025). At the time, the UN was at just 4 percent. UN peace operations represent the vast majority of the UN secretariat’s environmental footprint and emissions. The UNSCAP calls this out: “Within the UN system, the United Nations Secretariat is the largest contributor to climate change with approximately 60% of the total reported greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, mainly from peace operations faced with difficult security, logistical and political conditions.”Footnote 3 The UNSCAP responded with a ten-year plan aimed at the transformation of missions, meeting dramatic shifts in GHG emissions, and generating benefits for “sustainable development efforts overall.”Footnote 4 Thus, the only way to meet these goals is by changing how peacekeeping missions source their electricity.
Third, peacekeeping missions are out of step with meeting their host nations’ climate aims. Some missions account for large sources of GHG emissions within the host country; for example, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) is the country’s largest emitter. Countries with UN missions that are highly climate affected include the CAR, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, and South Sudan, as well as the Abyei area. Their populations have some of the lowest electricity access rates in the world, which serves as an impediment to sustainable development and economic growth. Peacekeeping missions are also major energy consumers.Footnote 5 The UNSCAP goals and the missions’ demand for clean electricity could be a way to spur partnerships with the host nation, other UN entities, and international actors to mitigate the effects of climate change and support access to energy, both of which are major aims in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Footnote 6 Yet few host nations currently see UN peacekeeping missions as partners for investing in greater access to renewable energy.
With the right support and leadership, peace operations can adapt to better meet their mandates, achieve their core aims, and open up new ways of working for a longer-lasting positive effect in these missions’ environmental policies.
Why Energy Matters
Broadly speaking, policy and academic analyses of modern peace operations tend to focus on political strategies, protection of civilians, and conflict dynamics. Less attention is paid to the complex ways that they function—how they are set up, operated, and run—or to the longer-term impact of operations. Rare attention goes to the role that energy plays in these operations, the demand and supply of electricity, and the ramifications for the peacekeeping missions and their host nations.
With a recent decline in large UN peacekeeping missions, some could argue that it is too late to change the current missions. The UNSC last authorized a major new peacekeeping force in 2014. By August 2024, the UN led eleven peacekeeping missions, with roughly 68,792 personnel, down from roughly 120,000 before the closures of missions in Darfur and Mali (and earlier in Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, and Liberia).Footnote 7 Despite these closures, however, large missions continue in the CAR (MINUSCA, with 18,782 personnel); in the DRC (the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or MONUSCO, with 13,987 personnel); in South Sudan (the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS, with 18,118 personnel); and in Lebanon (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, with 10,392).Footnote 8 Even with the mission drawdowns of MONUSCO expected in the DRC and of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) in Somalia, peace operations comprise a substantive part of the UN’s field missions, reputation, budget, and support for peace.
In addition to these reduced but substantial numbers, a renewed call for UN peacekeeping is imaginable. The levels of armed conflicts in the last decade have grown, with the Global Peace Index citing fifty-six conflicts for 2024, the most since World War II; efforts at peace will likely need the UN to play a role in some capacity.Footnote 9 The African Union (AU) reached a new framework agreement with the United Nations, enabling it to tap into UN funding for its future operations, which are expected to grow, and could turn to the UN for logistics and material support as well. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, dozens of additional peace operations are currently deployed and led by the European Union, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the AU, NATO, and other regional organizations and coalitions beyond the United Nations.Footnote 10 Few of these missions are as multidimensional as UN peace operations; many are observer and training missions or peace enforcement missions. When more comprehensive operations or greater support are needed for missions, a transition to a UN operation or a partnership with one is likely. Together, these trends demonstrate the importance of looking at mission energy use and how missions can shift to meet their goals while reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
Further, the bulk of UN peacekeepers are deployed in fragile, conflict- and climate-affected nations with low access to energy, such as South Sudan.Footnote 11 Those conditions affect how missions operate, especially in remote locations that have long supply chains and little access to reliable energy grids. The job of supporting these missions falls to the UN Department of Operational Support (DOS), which leads UN field support. Since 2017, the DOS has increasingly pressed missions to be good stewards of the environment, to shift to renewable energy, and to consider links to more comprehensive climate mitigation and SDGs.Footnote 12 Meeting the UNSCAP goals, including 40 percent renewable energy usage by 2025, is a huge job. With its 2023 environment strategy plan, the DOS prioritizes the greater use of renewables by UN missions. That plan acknowledges that only 7 percent of electricity consumption by UN field missions comes from renewable sources, up from 3 percent in 2018.Footnote 13 The DOS aims for operations to be “closer to the global share of renewables in power generation, which currently stands at around 29%.”Footnote 14 Even as the DOS and missions have ramped up efforts to expand sources of UN electricity—including using minigrids and solar energy, and buying local renewable energy—they are far from meeting their goals.
In addition, the ambitious policy effort to increase renewable energy must translate to the field. Mission personnel are deployed to multiple camps, bases, and offices across wide territories, often in locations with few roads. UN demand for electricity is often higher than country grids can provide when that option is available. So, the UN brings its own solutions, such as importing diesel fuel–powered generators and fuel for camps in remote locations. This system is standardized across UN operations, making it easier for troops, police, and civilians to deploy, either by using UN-owned equipment—primarily for personnel housed on UN compounds—or by bringing their own contingent-owned equipment that is reimbursed. In either case, the UN provides fuel for generators.
In Somalia, for example, the remote conditions facing the UN as it provided support to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) were daunting. In a 2022 study,Footnote 15 Abdi Aynte, Eugene Chen, and David Mozersky pointed out that only forty-six of seventy-nine locations could be reached by road, and the rest were only reachable by air “because AMISOM has not been able to secure the main supply routes within the country.”Footnote 16 The result was that:
UNSOS flew more than 2.5 million liters of fuel by air in 2021, nearly 2 million of which was diesel. Even absent the threat of ambushes and improvised explosive devices, travel by road can be challenging in Somalia, as road conditions are generally poor, and many roads are impassible during the rainy seasons (mid-March through June and mid-September through November).Footnote 17
The United Nations Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS), which supported AMISOM, sought to sponsor renewable energy projects, such as in Baidoa, where a deal between the UN, the World Bank, and the private sector supported electricity for UNSOS through a power purchase agreement (PPA), the first of its kind in Somalia. In 2023, the World Bank cited this project’s benefits as follows: “Leveraging a creditworthy off-taker such as the UN enables investment in clean and modern energy infrastructure, addressing a key barrier to the expansion of renewable energy in many Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations (FCS) contexts. The Project will replace existing diesel generators, significantly reducing green-house gas (GHG) emissions and the cost of electricity while increasing reliability of electricity supply within the green zone.”Footnote 18
Improving Mission Outcomes
Alongside increased data provided by the DOS and UN missions, a set of case studies of Somalia, South Sudan, the DRC, and Mali have expanded knowledge of energy’s role in specific nations and how the missions use it.Footnote 19 Each study explored whether or not peacekeeping missions could meet their mandate with renewable energy options, and if so, how renewable options could benefit the host nation and communities they deploy to serve. Even with different dynamics around the conflicts, economics, and politics of electricity, the case studies for the DRC, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan found potential economic, development, security, and peacebuilding benefits for the missions if they were to shift to a greater use of renewable energy. Further, each study catalogues the challenges for the missions that result from reliance on fossil fuel for electricity: from vulnerable supply lines to fuel loss and the feeding of a war economy.
The studies identified how the use of diesel fuel has unrecognized costs beyond its purchase price. Imported fuel is expensive for the United Nations; tracking the supply is not easy and it can also feed into corruption networks. Operating in fragile states brings risks of insecurity, and diesel fuel is attractive to steal. In Somalia, Mali, and South Sudan, the costs and human resources dedicated to supply lines for the transfer and delivery of fuel were high.Footnote 20 UN military peacekeepers are often tapped to provide security for convoys. In Mali, fuel transports for the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) experienced repeated attacks on convoys and peacekeepers. In 2019, the Cruz Report found that convoys were a primary source of insecurity. Missions with large logistics requirements could end up using as much as 90 percent of their forces on security for convoys and self-protection rather than on (their primary role of) peacekeeping.Footnote 21 In Somalia, the mission flew fuel to locations to avoid roads controlled by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab—and burned more fuel in the process of flying than it delivered—an outcome that supports looking into solar as an alternative option.Footnote 22 Mission leadership recognized that renewable energy could further reduce the need to fly fuel over insecure roads, but that translating that ambition will take time. In their 2023 study Renewable Energy and the United Nations: A Green Spark for Peace in South Sudan,Footnote 23 Eugene Chen, Flora McCrone, and David Mozersky found that the UNMISS navigated a complicated supply chain to import diesel fuel for its use, with as many as fifteen checkpoints run by armed groups collecting bribes and stealing supplies just along the main import route to the capital of Juba.Footnote 24 The UN and UN mission leaders, recognizing this problem, have sought renewables to help missions meet their mandates more effectively. In its 2023 strategic plan, the DOS stated that “the value of renewables for the safety and security of peacekeepers was noted, in addition to other benefits, with attention placed on the centrality of mandate implementation and on the importance of ensuring cost efficiency and value for money.”Footnote 25 The DOS also pointed to the “important contribution” that troop and police contingents could make, with new projects to shift to hybrid generators and solar options.Footnote 26
So far, the shift toward using renewables for UN operations is still small. The DOS reports that since 2018, the renewable energy use by UN field missions increased at a rate of about 1 percent per year.Footnote 27 The Environmental Strategy for Peace Operations 2023-2030 also reported that in 2024 about 7 percent of the energy used was from renewable electricity sources.Footnote 28 As cited earlier, the DOS is pressing to get to at least 29 percent, below the Secretary-General’s stated goal of 45 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2030.Footnote 29
Expanding Mission Partnerships
With the UN ambition to shift missions to renewable energy, it must identify how to source that supply, and where UN missions and the DOS should turn to partners to assist with meeting that goal. Practically, there are different ways to meet the immediate goal, but not all of them will accelerate change and increase electricity sources in the same way. The DOS prioritizes three approaches: connecting to local grids, where available; installing on-site renewable energy systems (such as a solar panel field); and anchoring new investment in local energy by outsourcing the renewable energy supply.Footnote 30 Of the three options, the DOS assesses that site-hosted solar grids for the missions are likely the simplest path to expanding renewable energy but may have the least impact beyond the mission’s benefit, with high initial costs that are paid back in two to five years.Footnote 31 Despite challenges, UNMISS, for example, has made incremental efforts to expand its renewable energy sources, including installing large on-site solar systems to serve the UN bases in Juba and Wau. Another option is connecting to local grids, where possible. In the DRC, for example, hydropower-connected grids are available in Kinshasa and parts of the East, and MONUSCO has used them.Footnote 32 With their vast potential for solar energy, Somalia and South Sudan could seek expansion. The third approach, working with host nations and partnering to support investment in additional sources of renewable energy, is the most ambitious to plan and achieve for the UN, but could minimize capital outlay and support a longer-term positive result in the host nation.
A potential PPA project model—which would involve a renewable energy company building a new project and the UN mission committing to purchase the clean energy—represents the most promising formula for developing projects that leverage the UN’s purchasing power and could benefit both the UN and local communities. This is a complex model, however, and efforts will only succeed with additional partners for the UN peace operations. For example, local governments and development partners such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Country Team (UNCT), the World Bank, and bilateral donors are mandated to work on issues of local energy access and development. The involvement of these partners enables planning and project development to incorporate local community needs and participation and can enable a better handoff of UN infrastructure to communities and those who could sustain energy production when a peace operation winds down. This PPA model should deliver cost savings on fuel for the UN, which could help persuade reluctant UNSC members and budget committees to support this transition.
As noted earlier, the World Bank reported that in South Sudan roughly 7 percent of the population had access to electricity in 2023. The country is a bad bet for most private investors, with its ongoing insecurity, weak economy, volatile currency, and low GDP. While South Sudan is an oil-producing state—the primary source of its wealth—it does not have domestic production facilities to refine oil into fuel and therefore still needs to import fuel to produce electricity; the war destroyed infrastructure and reduced the population’s access to energy. Investment in the country’s electricity options will take more than an initial financial calculation to realize. A PPA-driven solar project in Malakal, South Sudan, and discussions of connecting to the grid in Rumbek with an electrification project have either stalled or moved at a glacial pace.Footnote 33 The UNCT could coordinate with the UNMISS mission to identify a common approach to meeting South Sudan’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) objectives for gaining access to renewable energy in coordination with other development actors. For most missions, shifting to making renewable energy the standard way to do business means shifting how internal systems work.
Missions alone cannot support and deliver new energy options, however, as they lack the mandate, financing, and expertise. They need to partner with the host government alongside economic and development leaders to lead and drive options.Footnote 34 In this vein, the SDG7 Energy Compact of Renewable Energy for Peacekeeping was launched in 2022 to identify specific projects and partners to expand renewable energy for missions.Footnote 35 Under the SDG compacts, it gave this rationale:
Some of the countries that are presently hosting peacekeeping missions have among the lowest energy access rates. At the same time, the UN is often among the largest single consumers of energy (and sources of greenhouse gas emissions) in the host country, potentially providing an anchor client for energy providers in the local market.Footnote 36
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization that serves to support greater adoption and use of renewable energy, gave support to the compact. In January 2023, IRENA hosted a ministerial meeting with the United Nations, Denmark, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates, inviting energy ministers, UN and peacekeeping leaders, member states, and researchers to move the partnership forward and increase support for specific projects. The ministerial highlighted using UN peace operations as a reliable revenue basis to either strengthen existing renewable energy suppliers in nations or to attract new investments for projects to provide such energy, as well as the potential to leave a positive legacy:Footnote 37
Most energy projects in fragile contexts are hampered by the lack of appropriate de-risking. Despite the availability of funding especially blended finance in high impact projects, very few published tenders are considered bankable and therefore worth the investment. Private developers may face challenges related to the low energy consumption of the local community and its limited ability to pay for energy services. On the other hand, UN peace operations are, in some cases, among the largest energy consumers in their host countries. The operations’ creditworthiness and high energy demand make them reliable customers, providing a revenue basis to either strengthen existing renewables suppliers in host communities or attract investments for new projects. Therefore, the transition of peacekeeping missions to renewables offers a rare window to attract investments in renewable energy infrastructure for host countries that can outlast the presence of the mission.Footnote 38
In Somalia, the CAR, and South Sudan, national governments seek greater access to renewable energy to meet SDGs and climate goals, prioritizing it in their national strategies for doing so. The contradiction of well-supplied UN missions deployed alongside communities in need is easy to see. In some situations, UN camps are well lit and situated near population centers with less access to electricity. One senior official, Joseph Africano Bartel, the undersecretary of South Sudan’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry, noted that only a small percentage of South Sudan’s population had access to electricity, a figure that is officially cited as 7 percent.Footnote 39 That fact was visible, he noted, when he flew into the capital of Juba and could see the nearby UN compound lit up, but not Juba.
As missions plan to draw down, their aims for a positive legacy involve a transition to the UNCT and host nations and handing off programs and work that support longer-term peacebuilding. To improve that process, the UN Secretary-General laid out guidance in a 2022 report on transition planning that recognized the impact of the transition on peace operations.Footnote 40 Specifically, missions were cited as significant fuel consumers—through electricity generation and air and ground travel—and thus, that UN missions contribute not just to GHG emissions but also to air pollution and land contamination.Footnote 41 For these reasons, work by missions to mitigate these hazards should be continued by the UNCT, as well as efforts to meet the UNSCAP goals to reduce carbon emissions, use less fuel, and increase the use of renewable sources. The 2022 report cites the importance of advance planning in having an effective mission handoff to support renewable energy projects:
In peace operations, the increased use of renewable energy can have other benefits. It can contribute to improved safety and security by reducing the frequency and requirement of fuel convoys in locations where the United Nations is actively targeted. In locations where no renewable energy infrastructure exists, the United Nations can leverage its market power to partner with other organizations and commercial suppliers to develop renewable energy infrastructure. In addition to meeting the electricity requirements of the United Nations, the infrastructure would benefit local communities long after the departure of the mission. Such an approach is being pursued in Somalia, where a power purchase agreement was concluded in 2020 between the United Nations and a commercial renewable energy supplier. Because of the lead time required to develop such projects, planning for such projects should be initiated well in advance of the transition phases of missions.Footnote 42
A shift by missions could leverage their reliable purchasing power to attract investment in renewable energy infrastructure where the private sector may need to have a reliable client. Reducing diesel use would also reduce localized environmental and noise pollution—hazards of peacekeeping missions’ use of diesel fuel. This approach could thus support national goals and serve the populations that urgently need greater access to energy while also advancing the goal of mitigating climate change.
Climate Aims
Secretary-General Guterres’s fervent calls to address climate change, accelerate access to renewable energy, and articulate a moral argument to help lift millions of people from poverty demand consistent UN action. The Secretary-General has prioritized meeting the SDGs and addressing climate change, which he sees as cataclysmic, though he has yet to bring the same focused attention to changing how the United Nations itself operates in the field.
The year 2023 was confirmed as the hottest year on record; fossil fuel subsidies and GHGs reached a record high.Footnote 43 The 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report found that the record-setting GHG emissions showed a “global failure to meet climate goals” and that the energy sector was responsible for 86 percent of global CO2 emissions.Footnote 44 In launching the 2024 SDG report, the secretary-general decried that “our failure to secure peace, to confront climate change, and to boost international finance is undermining development,”Footnote 45 and reiterated that action for the SDGs must accelerate urgently. Guterres called for action “to bring peace to the major conflicts raging globally coupled with efforts towards a green transition. . . . ‘It means multiplying the lending capacity of multilateral development banks to provide more resources for climate action and sustainable development.’”Footnote 46
The SDG annual report noted that renewable energy increased to over 28 percent of electricity energy consumption in 2021, part of the dramatic growth in capacity for renewable energy: “This signals how the world’s capacity to generate renewable power is expanding at an unprecedented rate, presenting a tangible opportunity to triple global capacity by 2030,” as agreed at the twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28).Footnote 47 Yet the number of people lacking access to electricity grew for the first time in a decade, with most of the nations lagging in energy access in sub-Saharan Africa.
Pushing peacekeeping missions toward greater reliance on renewable energy requires resources, political will, and changing how missions deploy. It will also require working with governments, development agencies, and member states, especially to meet the secretary-general’s calls. With more attention and support from Secretary-General Guterres, UN missions could accelerate their efforts to move toward renewables, gaining efficiency, reducing costs, and improving the environment. Until that support manifests, however, UN missions cannot make this leap on their own. The DOS recognizes that a transition to renewable energy is necessary to reduce its environmental footprint and increase operational resilience, as highlighted in the UN Environment Strategy for Peace Operations (2017–2023, updated for 2023–2030), which identifies goals for UN missions to shift to renewable energy.
Changing Mindsets
The call for a transition to clean energy could face pushback and be seen as a form of mission creep by those focused on the core reasons for peacekeeping missions—to support political solutions to a conflict, to protect civilians, and to strengthen governance and peace. Strengthening economic development and climate mitigation by peace operations could be cast as secondary aims. If missions can meet or exceed their core mandate goals by shifting to more use of renewable energy, however, that initial concern is met. Meeting those secondary aims could reinforce, not distract from, efforts at meeting the mandate goals. The ambition is multifold, coming from the secretary-general who initially called for peacekeeping missions to align with climate goals for renewable energy to IRENA, peacekeepers, and UN member states today.Footnote 48 Host nations and communities are keen to see positive results and increase access to energy. The UN has an opportunity to meet its broader aims by building new partnerships to achieve them. Such ambitious change may also help missions achieve longer-term goals for peace and leave a positive longer-term contribution.
The head of UN peacekeeping, Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre LaCroix, briefed the UNSC in June 2023, laying out the links between threats to peace and climate change, the correlation between countries at risk from climate change and where UN peacekeepers deploy, and the importance of acting. The United Nations notes that LaCroix suggested that
most United Nations peace operations have faced a deteriorating security and political environment within the past several years. Alongside other cross-border challenges, environmental degradation and extreme weather events—amplified by climate change— have increasingly challenged missions’ ability to carry out their mandates. . . . With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimating that nearly 3.5 billion people live in climate hot spots, climate-related peace and security risks are only set to heighten. A strong correlation between Member States facing fragility and those facing climate change can already be seen, [LaCroix] pointed out, noting that the majority of the Organizations’ peace operations are deployed in highly climate-exposed contexts characterized by high levels of gender inequality. Of the 16 most climate vulnerable, 9 host a United Nations field mission.Footnote 49
Some member states have championed this view. As noted earlier, elected members of the UNSC, including the UAE and Norway, worked with IRENA to establish the SDG7 Energy Compact of Renewable Energy for Peacekeeping to accelerate an energy transition where UN missions operate. The energy compact’s projects span six countries and could expand further; at the 2023 IRENA Assembly, delegates from host nations cited a low rate of electrification and access and the need for investment. Leaders welcomed the buying power of UN operations and more public-private partnerships. They also agreed to support a research agenda, a financial derisking and financing analysis, increasing private sector engagement, linking national ministries and peacekeeping missions, and working with development and finance actors. That work expanded further, with nations hosting side events at both the COP28 and the high-level United Nations Peacekeeping Ministerial in Ghana to bring attention to expanding renewable energy use by peacekeeping missions.Footnote 50
Peace operations face tough field challenges that demonstrate the need to improve their relationships with host nations and to gain support from local leaders and communities, an essential part of pursuing peace. One way to do this is to work with them on climate and energy access in a new partnership that could improve outcomes for both parties. Since 2015, UN personnel and operations have decreased, but conflicts have become more prolonged and internationalized.Footnote 51 Heightened geopolitical tensions in the UNSC have undercut its authority and support to missions and reduced the pressure on parties to conflicts to uphold their commitments. That means UN missions experience obstacles—such as governments limiting their freedom of movement, using private security or mercenary forces, opposing democratic processes, and engaging in mis- or dis-information. Together, these factors can impede the protection of civilians and hasten a return to armed conflict. Accelerating the shifting of missions to renewable energy is one such creative solution that can both help peace operations meet their mandates and help nations meet their local and national goals.
The Way Forward
A shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy could help missions not only meet their objectives but also aim higher to meet climate goals, and possibly build better partnerships with host nations. This essay has argued that this shift would provide an important opportunity for missions to achieve three primary goals: first, to meet their mandates more effectively with reduced costs, increased security, and better environmental stewardship; second, to align with UN and international aims to reduce emissions and meet climate goals, including of their host nations; and third, to build better partnerships with communities, host nations, and other actors, and to expand electricity access for local benefit. Together, with imagination and partnerships, these efforts could strengthen the UN’s legacy and meet aspirations for the SDGs.
Such a positive legacy, however, requires concerted efforts by those who have argued for such a change, including the SG, UN, and international actors, to support changes in mission design; to recognize and bring attention to the opportunity in fragile states; to develop serious partnerships with host nations that tap development, finance, and philanthropic actors; to expand the peacebuilding research agenda; and to press the actors focused on the multiple goals of peace, climate, and development to work together.
Five areas could support that acceleration. First, the case for change needs greater attention and collaborative support. Secretary-General Guterres should lead the way for the UN to meet its 80 percent renewable energy goal by 2030, as well as galvanize implementation of the DOS strategy and alignment of UN bodies, including the UNSC and member states. His attention is needed to stimulate support for missions to shift to renewable energy options and highlight the costs saved in personnel, transport, insecurity, and budget. Freeing peacekeepers from the need to conduct convoy security could alone save human lives and financial resources.
Second, the UN should call on institutional partners to work on the shift to renewables in fragile states. The DOS plans are ambitious, but other institutions also need to engage in supporting UN missions and work with host nations, the UNCT, the UNDP, international financial institutes, and development organizations to support leveraging and sustaining energy options. UN missions can partner with the host nations, the UNDP, and development agencies to support what a country needs and incorporate that plan into longer-term transitions after mission drawdown. That work can build on the progress made at the 2023 side event at the COP28 and the high-level Peacekeeping Ministerial in Ghana.
Third, economic modeling could help conflict-affected countries served by peacekeeping missions consider how to use the UN missions as an anchor client or a reliable buyer for renewable technology.Footnote 52 Such analysis, like that regularly offered by IRENA and the World Bank to national governments, could assist national calculations and accelerate country-based planning. As noted earlier, Guterres called for action to help address major conflicts by expanding multilateral development banks’ lending capacity for climate action and sustainable development.Footnote 53 Such analysis could help the private sector understand risks, and possibly spur collaborations that link climate, development, and finance actors in sub-Saharan Africa. Additional research into the political economy of host nations, financial derisking and financing, and public- and private-sector engagement could assist national ministries and peacekeeping missions to identify how to collaborate on energy options. Planning that includes climate and development funding could jumpstart projects such as those identified by the Energy Compact of Renewable Energy for Peacekeeping.
Fourth, scholars and practitioners in the field of peacebuilding should look at how peacebuilding is affected by greater access to energy and its affiliated economic growth, use of electricity, and longer-term effects in fragile states. As the United Nations has put more emphasis on peacebuildingFootnote 54 as an institutional approach, as seen in the renamed Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, the role that energy can play in supporting longer-term peacebuilding needs to be better understood in relation to community engagement, the SDGs, and infrastructure development.
Finally, in addition to stronger leadership and better analysis, there needs to be a partnership to connect peacekeeping missions with UN development and finance actors, such as the UNDP, as well as the World Bank, the UNCT, and other entities.
The future of peace operations is not predictable, but it always requires that missions innovate to meet their core goals. Together, those who support peace operations could clarify what is a positive energy practice and ethical legacy for UN operations in fragile states. That includes considering how missions align with other aims, meet the SG’s goals on renewable energy, reduce a country’s emissions, and support the SDGs. Such changes can also help build a positive legacy, reduce missions’ dependence on fossil fuels, increase energy efficiency, and improve mission security while supporting the growth of sustainable energy infrastructure in host nations with very low electrification rates. Given the increase in conflict, climate effects, and energy needs worldwide, efforts at innovation and partnership should not lag; they should accelerate. Whether the overall footprint of peacekeeping missions continues to decline or whether the pendulum swings back to increased deployments, these missions can and should leverage renewable energy technology to chart a more ethical, sustainable, and effective path for addressing fragility and supporting peace and prosperity.
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