Mobilising Co-Benefits of Renewable Energy Promotion through Capacity Building on Assessment Methodologies

Across the world, promoting renewable energy plays a crucial role in mitigation against the impacts of climate change. Adoption of renewable energy technologies has not only revolutionised energy markets in industrial countries but increasingly does so in developing and emerging economies. Climate change mitigation is not an end in itself but creates significant economic and social co-benefits. More specifically, shifting towards wider adoption of renewable energy and cleaner production processes can have significant positive effects on livelihoods and businesses in almost all parts of the world. The potential co-benefits are manifold and include inter alia employment, health, education, social, economic, gender, and equality aspects.

For this reason, the International Climate Initiative (IKI), funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), had initiated the COBENEFITS programme on “Mobilising the Co-benefits of Climate Change Mitigation through Capacity Building among Public Policy Institutions” to combine and align climate change mitigation approaches with social and economic benefits and opportunities of promoting renewable energy. Within this wider framework, the specific project at hand has aimed to build the capacity of government institutions responsible for developing and implementing energy and climate policies in the four target countries South Africa, India, Vietnam, and Turkey on methods and tools that can help to identify and communicate social and economic opportunities of renewable energy.

adelphi and the Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU) at Freie Universität Berlin cooperated as content providers for the Renewables Academy AG (RENAC) who implemented the trainings and capacity building initiatives. In this role, adelphi has conceptualised and developed the online course on “Co-Benefits Assessments: Methods and tools to identify and communicate social and economic opportunities of renewable energy” as well as complementary teaching videos on course content. adelphi has put great emphasis on combining different teaching techniques that complement each other and speak to different user groups in order to ensure maximum reach and effectiveness. For this reason, developing an innovative blended learning approach that brings together visual, interactive, explanatory, and teacher-centric elements has been a key priority.