COP 30 Side Event | From Equality to Empowerment: Making the energy transition inclusive

As countries accelerate the clean energy transition, there is growing recognition that energy policies often overlook the needs of women, youth, and marginalized communities. Without deliberate efforts to integrate social justice into energy policy design and implementation, the energy transition risks deepening inequality, including exclusion from access to energy, employment, and business opportunities.  

Yet the energy transition also presents a real opportunity for transformative change through positive impacts on women, youth, and marginalized groups. Three key areas for this are clean cooking, solar irrigation, and just transition.  

Globally, governments spend billions subsidizing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), yet poor targeting leads to limited uptake of subsidized LPG by vulnerable households who continue to rely on biomass for cooking. In solar irrigation, government subsidy support is focused on individual solar pump ownership, which tends to exclude the poorest and women, who are not typically landowners. Lastly, falling demand for coal brings economic and social challenges for coal-producing economies. These shifts will have implications for women, informal workers, and other groups that are often underrepresented in traditional government consultation approaches. As governments shift public funds from fossil fuels to clean energy, emerging evidence suggests that energy policies can have more inclusive and sustainable outcomes.  

The COP 30 side event will invite experts from the energy, gender, development, business, and government sectors to share experience, innovations, and research on gender equity and social inclusion in clean energy transitions, particularly across three themes of clean cooking, solar irrigation, and just transition. This hour-long event will bring together researchers and practitioners to demonstrate that energy policy can better reflect the needs of women, youth, and disadvantaged groups through evidence-based and locally informed solutions.

This event is co-organized by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the International Development Research Centre, and the  National Research and Innovation Agency.

Agenda

Welcome

Angie Dazé, Director, Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, International Institute for Sustainable Development

Keynote Addresses

Bhim Adhikari, Senior Program Specialist, International Development Research Centre

Franky Zamzani, Director, Climate Change Adaptation, Ministry of Environment, Republic of Indonesia

Christine Lins, Executive Director, Global Women's Network for the Energy Transition

Roundtable

Liane Schalatek, Director, Heinrich Böll Stiftung

Maxensius Sambodo, Senior Researcher, National Research and Innovation Agency 

Shruti Sharma, Lead for Affordable Energy, International Institute for Sustainable Development

Melanie Chiponda, Shine Collaborative

Closing Summary