Clean Energy, Fair Choices: Why Governments Must Put Citizens at the Heart of Transition

UNDP finds that just energy transitions require meaningful civic participation alongside clean-energy investment, with governments strengthening laws, institutions, transparency and inclusive decision-making. Development partners and businesses can reduce transition risks by financing civic capacity, engaging affected communities early and ensuring that jobs, investment opportunities and transition benefits are distributed more fairly.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is putting public participation at the centre of the global clean-energy transition, arguing that replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy will not automatically produce fair economic and social outcomes. Its 2026 report, How Can Participation Deliver Just Energy Transitions? Entry Points and Lessons Learned from Nigeria and South Africa, was produced by UNDP's Governance, Rule of Law and Peacebuilding Hub, including the Global Policy Centre for Governance and Open and Inclusive Public Sphere team, together with the Healthy Planet Hub. Drawing particularly on research in Nigeria and South Africa, the report offers governments, development partners and businesses a practical roadmap for ensuring communities can influence decisions that affect jobs, investment, land, energy systems and local development.

UNDP already supports just energy transition processes in more than 30 countries, making the governance question increasingly important. The report identifies three interconnected areas, institutional, political and technical conditions, that determine whether participation works, while its wider Energy Governance Framework focuses on four priorities: inclusive and effective institutions, civic engagement and empowerment, legal and regulatory frameworks, and independent oversight.

From Energy Investment to a Governance Challenge

The report's central message is simple: building solar farms, wind projects, transmission networks and other low-carbon infrastructure is only part of the transition. Governments must also decide who participates, whose concerns are heard and how economic benefits and costs are distributed.

South Africa offers an important example. The country launched its Just Energy Transition Partnership in 2021, while the Presidential Climate Commission provided a multi-stakeholder platform and consultations across provinces. Such mechanisms can improve legitimacy, but UNDP warns that formal consultation alone is insufficient.

Participation can become symbolic when governments consult communities only after important decisions have been made. Weak legal mandates, short consultation periods, technical documents, missing feedback systems and centralized meetings can exclude precisely the workers and communities most affected by energy restructuring.

For policymakers, this means participation should be integrated throughout the policy cycle, from agenda-setting and planning to implementation, monitoring and oversight.

Governments Need Rules That Turn Voices Into Decisions

UNDP recommends moving away from temporary consultations towards permanent and legally supported participation systems. Governments can introduce or strengthen laws requiring civic participation in energy and climate planning, establish minimum consultation standards and create permanent multi-stakeholder platforms with clear mandates.

Authorities should also publish feedback explaining how public submissions influenced final policies. Local consultations need clear channels connecting community concerns with national decision-makers, while parliaments, regulators and independent oversight institutions should ensure participation influences implementation.

Institutional capacity will require investment. Ministries need dedicated officials responsible for engagement, staff trained in stakeholder mapping and facilitation, and budgets covering translation, transport and consultation costs.

The report also identifies unequal participation as a major problem. Large and well-funded organizations can dominate policy discussions while grassroots groups, women-led organizations and youth movements struggle to gain access. UNDP recommends targeted assistance including travel support, translation and childcare.

Kenya provides an example of longer-term civic capacity building. The Amkeni Wakenya facility, established in 2008, has supported more than 400 civil-society organizations through grants, training and knowledge management. UNDP suggests similar approaches could strengthen participation around energy transitions.

Development Finance Must Support People, Not Just Projects

The findings have significant implications for international development institutions. Transition finance traditionally emphasizes infrastructure, investment and emissions reductions, but UNDP's framework suggests development partners should also measure the quality of participation behind those investments.

Donors and multilateral institutions can incorporate civic-engagement requirements into programme design and evaluation, finance grassroots participation and strengthen government consultation systems. They can also support civil-society organizations with technical training in energy policy, budgeting and monitoring.

This matters economically because poor participation can allow concerns about employment, land, compensation and local benefits to remain unresolved until projects reach implementation. Earlier engagement can help governments and investors identify these risks before they become political disputes or obstacles to projects.

Development partners should therefore consider participation capacity as part of transition infrastructure rather than treating consultation as an administrative add-on.

Private Sector Faces Risks, and New Opportunities

Utilities, renewable-energy developers, mining companies and investors will play major roles in delivering transition projects. UNDP recommends embedding human-rights due diligence, grievance and remedy mechanisms and enforceable accountability requirements into permits and financing arrangements.

For companies, stronger engagement creates additional costs but can also reduce investment risk. Transparent consultation can identify disputes over jobs, land and community benefits earlier, potentially reducing conflict and improving the social legitimacy of projects.

Technology offers another opportunity. UNDP highlights SMS, interactive voice-response systems, communication applications, multilingual explainers and low-bandwidth AI-enabled tools as ways to reach people who cannot easily attend conventional consultations.

AI could also support energy forecasting, detect suspicious patterns in grid operations or payments and improve public access to energy and fiscal information. However, digital exclusion, weak safeguards and opaque systems could create new inequalities.

The report ultimately recommends a three-part strategy: institutionalize participation, rebalance political influence and remove technical barriers. Governments need enforceable rules and capable institutions; development partners need to finance civic capacity alongside physical infrastructure; and companies need to treat community engagement as part of investment governance.

The broader message is that billions invested in clean-energy infrastructure will not by themselves guarantee a just transition. Technology and finance can change the energy system, but trust, accountability and meaningful participation will determine whether societies accept that transformation and whether its economic benefits are shared fairly.