Powering Peace

UN peacekeeping missions are the tangible global response to conflict. These vast, ongoing operations also represent a unique opportunity to advance climate, development, and peacebuilding goals in some of the most fragile, underdeveloped and least electrified countries in the world.

During the 2023 - 24 academic year, the Dickey Center Powering Peace initiative is partnering with the Thayer School of Engineering on a project to develop a decision-making framework for stakeholders working to decarbonize United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions in fragile states. The project team includes Thayer professors Vikrant Vaze and Steven Peterson and Thayer graduate students Lilly Yang and Siqi Ke. Dickey Center Director Tori Holt serves as the lead advisor. The project is additionally supported by the Irving Institute for Energy and Society. 

What would it take for the United Nations, development donors, private investors, and entrepreneurs to make the transition to renewable energy a reality? The UN is committed to renewable energy and looking to change how it operates. Currently, UN peacekeeping missions rely primarily on generators burning fossil fuel that must be shipped in at great cost and significant risk.

Transitioning these outsized UN carbon footprints to renewable sources of energy provides a unique entry point to implement new projects that deliver climate change solutions where they are most needed. It offers the prospect of a win-win: the UN gets closer to fulfilling its pledge of 80 percent renewably-sourced energy by 2030, improves mission security, and lowers the cost of peacekeeping operations. At the same time, fragile host nations are provided with a sustainable energy infrastructure.

However, despite the good intentions and tremendous potential, progress has been slow. At present, only a fraction of funding to mitigate climate change goes to fragile states. The UN would like to partner with the private sector to catalyze renewable energy projects, but it lacks the systems and experience to do so at scale.

In May 2023, The Dickey Center hosted a workshop at Dartmouth, convening some of the world's foremost experts in the field. The workshop took a multi-disciplinary look at how to accelerate the transition of UN peacekeeping missions to renewable energy. Drawing on the knowledge of UN leaders, energy and entrepreneurial experts, diplomatic and policy leaders, and the financial sectors, we focused on moving from good intentions to practical plans to meet the UN's climate change goals, as well as the aims of host nations, UN missions, and the needs of the populations they serve. Learn more about the workshop and the participants here.