Supporting and influencing the SDGs

Empowering women: ENERGIA’s support for women entrepreneurs through skills training, mentorship and better access to markets and finance helps them establish and grow their businesses, generating vital income for their families and driving economic benefits for communities.

Facilitating access to affordable energy: Clean energy access reduces expenses related to traditional fuels, allowing families to redirect savings toward essential needs like education, health and nutrition.

Reducing healthcare costs: Enabling the use of clean cooking fuels helps lower healthcare costs associated with exposure to polluting cooking sources, indirectly reducing poverty in vulnerable communities.

Reducing indoor air pollution: Promoting clean cookstoves and solar technologies helps decrease harmful emissions from traditional biomass fuels, which disproportionately affect women and children as they are more frequently exposed to them.

Improving healthcare services: Reliable energy access in healthcare facilities is crucial for good community health, ensuring services continue even during power outages, for example with solar-powered lighting and equipment.

Supporting health education: By raising awareness about the health benefits of clean energy solutions, ENERGIA’s local programs are empowering communities to make healthier choices.

More time for study: Reducing the burden of collecting firewood and water frees up time for women and girls to focus on their education.

Skills and knowledge transfer: ENERGIA’s training programs equip women with skills in sustainable energy solutions, entrepreneurship and leadership. This has a multiplier effect in communities as women can go on to educate others, fostering a wider culture of learning and skill development.

Enabling educational facilities to operate effectively: Access to energy in schools and homes enables better lighting, offers the possibility to use access to digital tools (where these resources are available) and the ability to extend study hours, improving learning outcomes for students.

Empowering women economically: ENERGIA’s programs support women as entrepreneurs, employees and decision makers, helping them gain financial independence.

Gender mainstreaming in energy policies: By advocating for gender perspectives in energy policies and programs, we drive the inclusion of women’s distinct needs and contributions to ultimately create more inclusive, gender-sensitive approaches.

Increasing women’s access to clean energy: Through our focus on clean energy access, we can reduce the time women spend on traditional fuel collection and other manual tasks that could be replaced or enhanced through electrification.

Empowering women as leaders of climate action: By creating platforms for women’s participation in decision-making processes, ENERGIA can help women directly influence the policies affecting their lives. This also helps to ensure that energy projects are designed to meet the specific needs of women, who are often disproportionately affected by energy poverty​.

Addressing social barriers and raising awareness: Through ENERGIA’s research and advocacy, we challenge the social norms and barriers limiting women’s participation in the energy sector and in the wider economy.

Powering water systems with clean energy: Renewable energy technologies improve access to clean water in remote areas, enhancing sanitation and reducing waterborne diseases.

Reducing time spent on water collection: Implementing water systems powered by renewables alleviates the burden of water collection on women and girls, allowing more time for education or economic activities.

Community education: ENERGIA’s advocacy work and training emphasizes the importance of renewable energy in achieving water and sanitation goals. By educating communities on the benefits of renewable energy technologies, we can also help foster local solutions for sustainable water management.

Expanding access to clean energy: ENERGIA supports initiatives that provide affordable, clean energy technologies like solar home systems and clean cookstoves to underserved communities, transitioning them away from polluting fossil fuels and firewood while addressing limited income challenges.

Empowering women as energy entrepreneurs: Women can play a unique role in helping last-mile communities to transition to clean and/or renewable forms of energy through their trusted networks.

Building capacity for sustainable energy use: ENERGIA’s research, training, and community engagement increase awareness about clean energy benefits, helping communities adopt sustainable practices that reduce energy costs and environmental impacts, while also building local capacity for future maintenance, supporting long-term sustainability.

Reducing energy poverty: ENERGIA’s projects are particularly impactful in off-grid and remote areas where energy access is limited. By promoting decentralized renewable energy solutions, we can support the goal of achieving universal energy access for all.

Empowering women as climate leaders: By training women to be leaders and entrepreneurs in the renewable energy sector​, and by equipping women with the skills to implement sustainable energy solutions, ENERGIA ensures that women are part of the solution to climate challenges. And by leveraging women’s voices in climate-decision making processes, governments can develop more inclusive and effective climate strategies

Promoting clean energy solutions: By helping communities adopt renewable energy, such as solar power and clean cooking technologies such as clean cookstoves, we help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants.

Empowering women as climate leaders: By training women to be leaders and entrepreneurs in the renewable energy sector​, and by equipping women with the skills to implement sustainable energy solutions, ENERGIA ensures that women are part of the solution to climate challenges. And by leveraging women’s voices in climate-decision making processes, governments can develop more inclusive and effective climate strategies.

Addressing climate resilience in communities: Access to clean energy technologies can help communities build resilience against climate-related disasters that can disrupt traditional energy supplies. Beyond this, the women entrepreneurs we work with build climate-resilient businesses, for example, by making use of solar water pumps for irrigation to grow crops, reducing their reliance on the weather and enabling crop diversification. They also use the energy to power their digital communications to reach more customers and grow their businesses.

Advocacy for climate justice: ENERGIA’s work highlights the intersection between gender, energy access, climate justice and social inclusion. Our work informs global dialogues on sustainable development, ensuring that gender-responsive approaches are prioritized in climate action frameworks and that women play a pivotal role as change agents in a just, inclusive energy transition.

Enhance the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development: ENERGIA’s network is formed of multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge and expertise, to support the achievement of the SDGs listed above. Through our network, we harness effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships to drive lasting change. Working together across disciplines and sectors, for example through the Gender and Energy Compact we help to accelerate a just, inclusive and sustainable energy transition.