Sherwin Das

Managing Director
Energy Peace Partners
United States

Dec 15, 2020

Sherwin Das is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Energy Peace Partners (EPP), where he works at the intersection of renewable energy and peacebuilding. After earning a B.A. in History and Economics, he worked in the private sector for 10 years. Deciding to make a career change, he went to Kosovo in 1999 to work in the humanitarian aid sector.  He soon carved out a career with the United Nations in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Africa, and at the UN Secretariat in New York, specializing in issues related to peacekeeping, mediation, and conflict prevention. During his work as Chief of Political Affairs with the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA), he recognized that high-level peace processes need to be accompanied by tangible peace dividends for conflict-affected communities in order for peace to be more sustainable. Seeking to connect recent advances in technology with the peace and conflict space, Sherwin became a Senior Fellow in the Program on Conflict, Climate Change & Green Development at the University of California Berkeley’s Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory. It was during this time that Sherwin contributed to EPP’s foundational research and to the ideas which provided the impetus for establishing EPP.  

With the launching of EPP in 2017, Sherwin has been furthering research and action on the ways in which renewable energy can support peace. EPP identified 27 countries that are highly vulnerable to conflict and climate change, while also characterized by significant levels of energy poverty. Little of the more than $300 billion in global renewable energy investment flows to these states. Sherwin’s work with EPP focuses on the unique idea that renewable energy can be a tool for peace, and he has been focused on identifying entry points for supporting renewable energy in EPP’s target countries. Sherwin explains, “While the renewable energy revolution is sweeping the world, fragile, energy poor countries are largely missing out. However, renewable energy technology now offers avenues to implement concrete, tangible projects on the ground that provide cleaner, cheaper energy access and other clear socioeconomic benefits.”

EPP’s initiatives are centered around two goals: the reduction of diesel fuel use by UN field missions through the system-wide adoption of renewable energy, and innovative financing for renewable energy projects in conflict-affected communities with low levels of electrification. EPP’s work is especially poignant in light of the UN Secretary-General’s 2019 commitment that the UN Secretariat – which includes carbon-intensive international peacekeeping operations – will source 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030, when currently only around 3 percent of UN peacekeeping electricity is sourced from renewables. More than 50 percent of the UN Secretariat’s carbon footprint comes UN peacekeeping operations, with the vast majority coming from the six missions in sub-Saharan Africa, namely those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Darfur region of Sudan, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, and Mali. In all of these missions, limited in-country electricity grid infrastructure and short-term mission budget cycles necessitates reliance on diesel fuel sources. EPP’s work is made even more important and urgent by evidence that suggests that local procurement of fuel in these contexts can also inadvertently support conflict, as fuel and oil resources can be involved in financing conflict.

To achieve the organization’s first goal, EPP, as part of its Powering Peace initiative with The Stimson Center in Washington DC, has worked closely with the UN Secretariat and individual peacekeeping missions to make the case for a system-wide transition to renewables. Such transitions would provide short-term benefits for the missions themselves, in the form of cleaner, cheaper energy, while introducing long-term renewable energy infrastructure into some of the least electrified countries in the world, critical assets that can endure beyond the duration of the missions. EPP has published South Sudan’s Renewable Energy Potential: A Building Block for Peace, Renewable Energy and UN Peacekeeping: Untapped Potential in the DRC (with Stimson), and will soon publish Shifting Power: Transitioning to Renewable Energy in UN Field Missions (also with Stimson).

To achieve its second goal, EPP has developed an innovative financing instrument called the Peace Renewable Energy Credit (P-REC). Each P-REC represents 1 megawatt/hour of new renewable energy generation combined with the associated social co-benefits. P-RECs extend the $1 billion international market in Renewable Energy Credits – internationally-traded virtual commodities that have supported global renewable energy growth – to fragile, energy-poor countries. P-RECs provide a market mechanism that allows developers to monetize renewable energy generated from approved projects in EPP target countries, while providing voluntary corporate buyers with entry points to support impactful projects.  

Microsoft recently announced the purchase of the first P-RECs from a project in the DRC. The transaction allowed local Congolese solar developer Nuru to fund a public streetlighting project in the Ndosho neighborhood of Goma, where only 3 percent of residents have access to electricity. Microsoft’s purchase of P-RECs provided an opportunity to support a high social impact renewable energy project. The streetlights, which benefit 28,000 residents, have allowed businesses to stay open longer, increased safety and security at night and reduced reliance on dirty and expensive diesel generators. Sherwin and his colleagues at EPP are now developing P-REC projects in South Sudan, Chad, Somalia, Uganda, Mali, and Central African Republic as well as in Myanmar and Bangladesh. EPP will open a regional office in Nairobi in early 2021 to expand their activities in sub-Saharan Africa.

Sherwin’s work highlights the potential for renewable energy and innovative finance solutions to contribute significantly to the field of environmental peacebuilding, especially in terms of real, on-the-ground impacts. He explains his connection to environmental peacebuilding: “So many different strands of work fit under the umbrella term of environmental peacebuilding. Renewable energy is a climate solution and our work helps to push boundaries of how people think about what a climate solution is. How can these climate solutions support peace and stability in countries around the world?” Within the Association, he has found space to work on these issues with like-minded practitioners. Energy Peace Partners is also an institutional and active member in the Association.