Project overview

This project will analyse rapid investments in renewable energy and housing to inform global policy and data practices, while tackling gender inequalities.

GENERATE will undertake in-depth case studies involving range of rural and urban locations that have experienced rapid investment in renewable energy and housing retrofits.

The knowledge gained from this region will be extended and applied globally, through a series of collaborations with practitioner and academic organisations in Asia, Africa, North America and Europe.

Using a variety of dialogic methods the project opens the space for multiple pathways of policy engagement; allowing national, European and trans-national institutions to develop improved decision-making processes, indicator frameworks, and monitoring mechanisms to address the hidden geography of gender inequalities exposed by the project.

The project’s outcomes will be of use to the research units within urban and regional authorities, EU data observatories (the Observatory on Equality at the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, the European Energy Poverty Advisory Hub, the Energy Community, as well as the European Social Observatory) in addition to national statistical agencies. GENERATE will assist such bodies in the determination of future data requirements and reporting processes.

Policy recommendations will be relevant to institutions operating at an array of governance scales: starting from fine-grained processes within the household and extending to the analysis of energy chains and regulatory organisations spanning entire continents.

The project is guided by the following questions:

  • How are end-use energy-related gender inequalities (re)produced and governed by the formal and informal decision-making structures of state and non-state organisations?
  • What is the socio-spatial composition and distribution of energy poverty in gender terms?
  • How does gender inequality relate to emergent forms of energy production and use?
  • How are energy-related gender vulnerabilities experienced and reproduced at the level of everyday life?
  • Which forms of political emancipation, contestation and struggle are being used to challenge and transform energy-related gender inequalities?