Delivered by Christian Wolff, Programme manager migration and displacement

Thank you, Chair.

ACT Alliance is proud to support the Clean Energy Challenge mentioned earlier, and we are listed among the initial group of supporters.

We are grateful for the interesting and thought provoking contributions from the panelists earlier, and would like to stress two particular aspects that are of crucial importance from our perspective.

One is the absolute necessity to work towards renewable energy, and to get out of the cycle of producing carbon as we access energy – in any setting, including during emergencies. For us, this is part and parcel of achieving climate justice in the context of the need for raising our collective ambition to implement the Paris Agreement.

Secondly, and this is an aspect which was a bit neglected on the panel – we would like to stress the need to keep working for alternatives to camps. Our efforts to provide access to renewable energy to refugees should not be constricted by delivering these solutions in the relatively more convenient setting of a camp, but rather, our collective ambition should be to enable both refugees and host communities alike to access such energy. This would go a long way not only towards supporting SDGs 7 and 13, but would also support the whole of society approach  promoted by the Global Compact on Refugees and make it easier for refugees to effectively access all of their rights, including but not limited to, the right to access energy in a sustainable way.