BOX 4. The evidence base for energy’s contribution to the SDGs Jeuland et al. (2021)105 reviewed approximately 3,000 papers that consider the impacts of access to energy on both development and/or environmental outcomes. They conclude that “Overall, the review reveals that there is not always strong evidence for the claim that access to modern energy services improves environmental and development outcomes. For instance, while there is strong support for the idea that traditional household cooking technology is damaging, evidence on the positive effects of improved cooking technologies is more ambiguous.” … “Furthermore, in some domains (e.g., health care delivery), and for some technologies (e.g., decentralized renewables), evidence is thin, inconsistent, or even invisible in the literature…”. A 2019 review of 85 energy-intervention impact-evaluation studies for the Asian Development Bank106 reaches a similar conclusion. A narrower review of 50 rural electrification impact-evaluation studies for the Inter-American Development Bank in 2017 finds “…substantial welfare gains, which tend to be greatest for women and small firms. On average, electrification leads increases of around 7 percent in school enrolment, 25 percent in employment, and 30 percent in incomes. However, the estimates vary widely, with many studies finding no effects, indicating weak links in the empirical literature.” Lee et al (2021), consider why the impacts of rural electrification are so varied and conclude that “access to household electrification alone is not enough to drive meaningful gains in development outcomes.” A successful energy project is therefore a necessary but not sufficient condition to realize the other SDGs. Finding 12. Gender equality and women’s empowerment through energy. The energy portfolio has integrated positive elements of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in the design of initiatives, but the majority of these initiatives are too reliant on assumptions that women will automatically benefit if they are simply included in energy initiatives. Just over half of the total UNDP energy budget goes towards project outputs that were expected to benefit women’s equality and economic empowerment.107 This low number is disappointing since the UNDP gender equality strategy108 encourages projects to adopt outputs that are at least gender-responsive, meaning results address the differential needs of men, women or marginalized populations and focus on equitable distribution of benefits, resources, status and rights. There are good reasons to do so for the energy sector: evaluations demonstrate that UNDP energy initiatives operate in a male-dominated sector, and evidence from outside UNDP suggests that a gender-responsive strategy should be considered a minimum to avoid a detrimental impact on women’s equality.
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Jeuland, M et al (2021) Is energy the golden thread? A systematic review of the impacts of modern and traditional energy use in lowand middle-income countries. Marc Jeuland and T. Robert Fetter and Yating Li and Subhrendu K. Pattanayak and Faraz Usmani and Randall A. Bluffstone and Carlos Chavez and Hannah Girardeau and Sied Hassen and Pamela Jagger and Monica M. Jaime and Mary Muthoni Karumba and Gunnar Kohlin and Luciane Lenz and Erin L. Litzow and Lauren Masatsugu and Maria Angelica Naranjo and Jorg Peters and Ping Qin and Remidius Denis Ruhinduka and Montserrat Serrano-Medrano and Maximiliane Sievert and Erin O. Sills and Michael A. Toman}, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021, Vol 135. Asian Development Bank, Pacific Energy Update 2019, 2019. Based on UNDP gender review of project design. GEN2 and GEN3 outputs make up slightly more than half of UNDP energy expenditure ($132 million), with GEN0 and GEN1 ($128 million). In the UNDP gender equality strategy 2018-2021, GEN0 Indicates outputs at the project level are not contributing to gender equality. No activities or components of the output contribute to the promotion of gender equality and are considered ‘gender-blind’. GEN1 indicates output at the project level contributes in a limited way to gender equality, but not significantly. GEN2 Indicates that gender equality is not the main objective of the expected output, but the output promotes gender equality in a significant and consistent way. GEN 3 Indicates that gender equality and/or the empowerment of women are an explicit objective. It is considered equal to GEN2, rather an improvement. UNDP, Gender Equality Strategy, 2021. Online: https://www.undp.org/publications/undp-gender-equality-strategy-2018-2021. Accessed: 14 September 2021.
Chapter 4. FINDINGS
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