Clean Energy Transitions: A Care Economy Lens

The global transition to clean energy is reshaping not only how communities produce and consume power, but also how households organise care work and manage daily subsistence tasks. Clean energy interventions have the potential to significantly reduce the time and physical burden associated with unpaid care and domestic work, which falls disproportionately on women and girls. By decreasing reliance on biomass collection, reducing cooking times, and enabling productive activities after dark, clean energy technologies can directly address energy poverty while transforming the gendered dynamics of time use and labour allocation within households.

Yet without intentional attention to care economy considerations, clean energy transitions risk overlooking, or even exacerbating, existing inequalities in the distribution of unpaid work.

This report showcases three research projects within the Clean Energy for Development: A Call to Action initiative that have explicitly examined clean energy interventions through a care economy lens, investigating how clean energy access affects women's time allocation, reduces drudgery, and creates possibilities for more equitable distribution of household labour. Drawing on evidence from West Africa, as well as multi-country pilots spanning Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Kenya, this report shows with clarity and conviction that the success, or failure, of clean energy transitions rests on how well care is integrated within them.