Publication - The Costs of Fuelling Humanitarian Aid

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Title

The Costs of Fueling Humanitarian Aid

Author

Owen Grafham & Glada Lahn

Published in

December 2018

Abstract

Energy is essential to humanitarian action. Most refugee and internal displacement camps are in remote locations, so humanitarian agencies consume large amounts of fuel on the long-distance transport of staff, equipment, and goods such as food and water.

Operations tend to rely on on-site electricity generation to power reception centres, clinics, schools, food storage, water pumping and street lighting. Peacekeeping operations face a similar situation.

The global case load for humanitarian agencies has continued to rise throughout the last decade, but no major agency has a comprehensive strategy for addressing its energy use. Nor, despite the UN’s stated commitment to carbon neutrality by 2020, is there a concerted effort to move away from fossil fuel.

In the absence of more reliable data from a greater number of agencies, any estimates of energy costs associated with complex humanitarian situations – or of the potential to effect savings – will be highly flawed. Nevertheless, drawing on our limited research and that of others in the sector, we estimate that around 5 per cent of humanitarian agencies’ expenditure goes on diesel, petrol and associated costs such as fixing generators. That would mean that the sector spent some $1.2 billion on polluting fuel in 2017.

As the examples of best practice in this paper demonstrate, doing things differently could create large savings for individual agencies. Based on the current best-practice examples that we have observed, we estimate that the sector could save at least 10 per cent of fuel costs on ground transport, 37 per cent through behaviour change and more efficient technologies, and 60 per cent on generation – all using currently available, affordable and proven practice and technology changes. At current prices, this could mean operational savings of over $517 million a year for the humanitarian sector, roughly equal to 5 per cent of UNHCR’s funding gap for 2017.

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