Paper short abstract:

In 2015 the war in Yemen led to the collapse of the public grid. After a short period of a massive adoption of Solar PV people shifted to the emerging commercial micro-grids CGs (neighbourhood-diesel generators). This paper will look at the political and social implications of the spread of CGs.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015 the war in Yemen led to the collapse of the public electricity grid. After a short period of a large-scale adoption of Solar PV people shifted to newly emerging commercial micro-grids (CGs), which tend to be diesel-powered generators serving neighbourhoods. This paper is based on ongoing research on the political and social implications of the spread of CGs in the context of Yemen’s ongoing conflict. Notwithstanding the role CGs play in lessening the scope of the current electricity crisis, their emergent and likely permanent establishment within the configuration of the electricity system carries considerable risks socially, politically, and economically. For a start, they compete with other more sustainable alternatives using renewable energy technologies (Mehigan et al., 2018). The exorbitant membership fees and high tariffs burden subscribers, leaving some to choose between energy and other needs(World Bank, 2017). This contributes to the widening inequality gap and the empowerment of a group of private actors who have their vested interest in keeping the status quo. In turn, these shifts in interests and institutional power have fed back into the dynamics of the conflict, leading to entrenching and legitimizing key actors within the conflict. To illuminate the political economy of CGs in Yemen, I develop a model of technology diffusion within the structures and dynamics of the conflict to identify key moments of realignment and emergence both within the socio-political system and the energy system.