Thousands of Syrian families will light up their homes, charge their phones and chill their food by solar power tonight, as Jordan’s Azraq camp becomes the first refugee camp in the world to be powered by renewable energy.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, switched on Azraq’s new two-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant on Wednesday. It will provide clean energy free of charge to some 20,000 Syrian refugees living in shelters that have been linked up to the electricity grid since January. The grid is due to be expanded to all 36,000 refugees currently residing in the camp by early next year.
“The construction of the solar plant is a remarkable example of cooperation between a host government, a private organization, and UNHCR. Through the generous support of the IKEA Foundation and with the collaboration of the Government of Jordan, we can not only address the immediate electricity requirements of refugees living in Azraq, but we can also support the longer-term energy needs of refugees and the Jordanian host communities,” UNHCR Representative.
The plant was built at a cost of 8.75 million euros (US$9.6m), funded entirely by the IKEA Foundation’s “Brighter Lives for Refugees” campaign. It will result in immediate energy savings of US$1.5m a year – which UNHCR will be able to reinvest in other much-needed assistance – as well as annual CO2 emissions savings of 2,370 tons.
Electrification will transform the lives of Syrian refugees living in the harsh environment of the camp, located in Jordan’s barren northern desert. For the past two and a half years, Azraq’s residents were reliant on portable solar lanterns to light their homes, and had no reliable means of preserving food or cooling their shelters in the extreme desert heat. The introduction of electricity earlier this year improved their daily lives.
Source: UNHCR. Read full article here.
22 May, 2017
