PEP Brings Energy-Care Research to the Global Stage at Women Deliver 2026

27-30 April 2026 | Narrm (Melbourne), Australia

PEP brought evidence from its multi-country research to the global stage at Women Deliver 2026. Our Executive Director showed that clean energy transitions can reduce women’s care burdens when women have the agency to shape how those gains are used.

On 29 April 2026, mid-way through a packed four-day programme in Narrm (Melbourne) for the Women Deliver 2026 Conference, PEP's Executive Director, Prof. Jane Mariara, took the floor at a side session on Reimagining Care Infrastructures for Just and Feminist Futures. She shared evidence highlighting the links between energy poverty and care burdens.

The session was jointly organised by the Africa Cares Together (ACT) Community of Practice and the Clean Energy for Development: A Call to Action (CEDCA) initiative. PEP is conducting research across four countries on how clean energy transitions can help create more just, inclusive, and sustainable development pathways under the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)’s CEDCA programme.

PEP’s Research in the Room

Prof. Mariara’s contribution drew on findings from PEP’s CEDCA-supported work, including the newly released report Clean Energy Transitions: A Care Economy Lens, to which Prof. Mariara and PEP’s Director of Research, Jorge Davalos, contributed. The session provided a high-profile platform to present three core arguments from PEP’s research:

Prof. Jane Mariara at the #WD2026 — Prof. Mariara at #WD2026

Energy poverty is time poverty for women.

Prof. Mariara highlighted that climate and energy crises intensify women’s unpaid care burdens. She shared how women and girls spend more time on tasks such as water and fuel collection, often at the expense of income-generating activities. Addressing this requires more than expanding energy access; it requires deliberate policy attention to how the benefits of clean energy transitions are distributed.

“Energy access matters but agency determines outcomes. Whether time savings translate into rest, new opportunities, or improved wellbeing depends on whether women have the power to decide how that time is used,” she said.

Time saved is not automatically wellbeing gained.

A key finding from PEP’s work is that reducing care drudgery through energy access does not automatically improve women’s wellbeing. The conditions under which time is freed — and who controls how it is used — matter enormously. This nuance is often missing from mainstream energy policy.

Engaging the Private Sector

Prof. Mariara also highlighted the role of the private sector in enabling clean energy transitions. She identified how private sector enterprises can act as financiers supporting smallholder farmers to adopt technologies, as suppliers of appropriate solutions, and as service providers ensuring their reliability over time.

Women and Youth as Agents, Not Beneficiaries

A recurring theme in Prof. Mariara’s contribution was the importance of repositioning women and youth from passive beneficiaries of energy transitions to active agents shaping them at the community level. This shift, she argues, is foundational to achieving feminist futures that redistribute power, not just resources.

“When women and youth help shape energy systems, transitions move beyond technical upgrades to become pathways toward more equitable, care-centred economies,” she said.

Synergies Across the CEDCA Portfolio

The session featured insights from multiple IDRC-supported projects from around the globe, including PEP’s four-country research and complementary work from Senegal, alongside 19 ACT projects. The exchange underscored meaningful synergies across the CEDCA portfolio — different geographic contexts, shared structural findings — reinforcing the value of PEP’s comparative, multi-country approach.

The Melbourne Declaration

Prof. Mariara, representing PEP, endorsed the Melbourne Declaration, a shared commitment that emerged from the conference, affirming the call to “rebuild systems so that governments can better deliver for girls, women, and gender-diverse people, with international actors strengthening public systems rather than standing in for them.” This aligns directly with PEP’s mission to support evidence-based, locally grounded policy change.

Prof. Mariara reflected on the significance of the moment:

“Change called us here. And change we must make – from clean energy transitions to reducing drudgery in care responsibilities. Together we can do it.”

Policy Takeaways from the Session

The session produced five messages for policymakers, funders, and practitioners to which PEP’s research contributed directly:

Energy is a care and wellbeing issue: energy poverty drives time poverty, intensifying women’s unpaid care work and affecting health and wellbeing.
Care infrastructure is both social and economic: investing in care benefits women, families, and markets but requires sustained resources and capacity-building.
Women must be central to solutions: women are key to identifying energy and care interventions that reduce drudgery at household and community levels.
Care systems need recognition, dignity, and voice: care work remains largely informal and under-recognised; bold engagement with the state is needed to co-design systems that centre caregivers.
Care is deeply intersectional and political: evidence shows care sits at the crossroads of climate change, gender-based violence, digitalisation, conflict, and rising fuel prices.

**Natalia Saba** from **Développement international Desjardins (DID)** and Jane Mariara, Executive Director of the **PEP - Partnership for Economic Policy** (PEP), contributed to the discussion, alongside facilitators **Deepta Chopra** and **Ruhil Iyer** from the **Institute of Development Studies**, and partners from across Africa and beyond.

Read the report: Clean Energy Transitions: A Care Economy Lens - Clean Energy for Development.