Social life cycle assessment of renewable energy communities in Namibia: exploring pathways to well-being

Abstract

• Social impacts of Namibian renewable energy communities are assessed using S-LCA • Potential impacts on community members’ well-being are assessed before and after • Increased rigour in causal mapping of impact pathways • S-LCA IP method reveals context-specific social stressors and their root causes In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) conventional, centralised fossil-based energy systems have been unable to provide access to electricity to around 600 million people and roughly 1 billion lack clean cooking fuels. Therefore, decentralised renewable energy communities (RECs) are increasingly seen as an option to achieve universal energy access, yet their social impacts are not fully understood. This paper addresses this gap by applying the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) method in exploring the potential social impacts of RECs on community well-being in Namibia for the first time. This study advances the S-LCA practice by combining the qualitative data with the impact pathway (IP) approach, thus demonstrating how to produce current and potential IPs of REC intervention systematically from local stakeholders’ insight through thematic qualitative data analysis. This approach allows the empirical identification of locally perceived social mechanisms and cause-effect relationships relating social stressors and energy access to well-being. We found that perceived well-being benefits of RECs, such as improved livelihoods and education, are conditional on productive energy use and equitable distribution of benefits, while structural inequalities may limit scalability, and new social risks may emerge. Based on the findings, the article discusses how the qualitative IP approach can surface locally perceived root causes and complex structural issues that might be overlooked with generic, quantitative S-LCA assessments.