News

On the 26th of September, CESET organised an external facing conference “From Market to Social Value: Reimagining the role of community energy in Sustainability Transitions” in Sheffield. The conference brought together the CESET team, researchers, activists, practitioners, and community energy project managers from the UK, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa. The conference included keynotes followed by responses and open discussion.

Solomon Bahta and Mulualem Gebreslassie authored a CESET conference paper, which was presented virtually by Solomon on 22 December 2023, at the International Conference on Environmental Engineering and Renewable Energy (ICENVERE - 23) in Finland, thanks to funding from the CESET project.

On 28 November 2023 the CESET project team held an online discussion about promoting intersectional energy education in Africa. The meeting was organized to discuss and share experiences across Malawi, Mozambique and Ethiopia and to learn and design better training and education for energy engineers. The participants reached a consensus that there is a gender gap in the engineering education sector, particularly in Electrical and Mechanical engineering, which are important routes for entering the energy sector.

CESET is delighted to welcome Shirley to its team through the University of Sheffield’s Evidencing Impact Internship scheme, which aims to help students develop their employability skills by working within the University on a project-based placement.

Shirley is a current student at The University of Sheffield studying MSc Management. She holds a Bachelor’s Honours degree in Economics from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. 

In September CESET researcher Harshit visited different community energy projects in Malawi to gain a deeper understanding of the landscape of CES projects. This is the third blog in the series. You can read the first here and the second here. 

In September 2023, CESET researcher Dr. Harshit Vallecha (Loughborough University) carried out field visits to different projects in Malawi. This blog is the first of three and provides the summary of sites visited in central region of Malawi.

Associação Moçambicana de Energias Renováveis have recently produced a report that explores the gaps and opportunities in the national legislation of Mozambique to propose an additional package of incentives to stimulate the operators in the off-grid sub sector to adhere to the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Seal (GESIS) norm. 

Our CESET co-investigators Carlos Shenga and Lorraine Howe of the Centre for Research on Governance and Development (CPGD) in Maputo have published a Portuguese language policy brief ‘Oportunidades para Absorver Projectos Comunitários Energéticos’ on Mozambique's off-grid energy regulation. The policy brief provides an overview of a study, funded by The University of Sheffield's Impact Accelerator Account, that assessed the opportunities and challenges for the uptake of off-grid energy projects in the country.

Our CESET team have contributed chapters to the new ‘Handbook on Energy Justice’ edited by Stefan Bouzarovski et al (2023) and published by Elgar.