What is the Solutions Movement?

Today, Student Energy is proud to launch the Solutions Movement, one of the most ambitious youth-led energy initiatives to date. This project aims to mobilize $150M dollars by 2030 to fund, support and deploy 10,000 youth-led clean energy projects globally. To reach this objective, Student Energy aims to raise $10 million in 2021 to kickstart youth energy action this decade. 

This initiative was announced June 25th, 2021 as an official Energy Compact of the United Nations High-level Dialogue on Energy’s Ministerial Thematic Forums, with support from our first funder, the Government of Denmark, and key project partner, New Energy Nexus. 

Let’s unpack the rationale, mechanisms, and key figures involved in our Solutions Movement, as well as how to get involved.

 Empowering Young People to Lead the Energy Transition

The Solutions Movement is inspired by watching the growth and career journey of many of Student Energy’s own alumni as they progressively ramped up their impact on their community’s energy systems, despite often facing significant financial and regulatory barriers. Student Energy’s 12 years of experience in youth empowerment has revealed that youth are deeply passionate about solving the critical problems facing the global energy system, including both climate change and energy poverty, but often lack the financial resources and active support needed to become true agents of change. 

Young people face numerous barriers in achieving their ambition for creating a sustainable and equitable energy future:

1. The earliest barrier is a lack of inclusion within region- and country-level stakeholder engagement. According to  Student Energy’s Global Youth Energy Outlook, 50% of surveyed youth have never been asked their opinion about the future of energy by their government or any other local organizations. How can youth perspectives on climate change and energy access shape the energy future if their voices remain unheard?
2. The next barrier is a lack of talent development pipeline to accelerate their motivation into action. Despite their passion for resolving the climate crisis as demonstrated by the never-before-seen globally coordinated youth protests in 2019 and 2020, 74% of global youth indicate that they still do not have a clear idea of how they can create solutions for solving climate change. Student Energy believes that with accessible and experiential energy career training, this talent can be deployed where it is most needed. But right now, due to a lack of dedicated training programs for clean energy, 65% of HR managers in the energy sector indicate that they are seriously concerned about the availability of highly skilled talent, indicating that international ambitions for deploying clean energy far exceed current future clean energy workforce supply.
3. Despite some youth being drawn towards entrepreneurship as a way of influencing their energy future, 82% of global young entrepreneurs indicated that a lack of financial support is the main barrier toward entrepreneurship. Specifically, youth entrepreneurs thrive when given non-dilutive capital around USD 6,000 per project range – a category that is currently outside the wheelhouse of traditional financiers. 
4. Finally, there is a major barrier for financing climate and energy solutions in the Global South. Even with dedicated funding for clean energy solutions in certain wealthier regions, only USD$45B out of the USD$455B in global climate finance crossed borders from an OECD to non-OECD country, with the majority of the small funds distributed taking the form of loans. This lack of any real early-stage risk capital in critical energy markets represents yet another unjust aspect of the energy transition, where the Global South could continue to be left behind as the world transitions toward clean energy over the coming decades. Besides energy justice, deploying sufficient clean energy in emerging economies also represents a critical juncture in achieving global climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement.

For all of these reasons, right now, Student Energy is actively raising $10 Million by December 2021 to build out the first tranche of programming and systems to put us on the path to unlock 10,000 youth climate solutions and train 50,000 agile and employable youth workers in the clean energy sector by 2030. Student Energy’s Solutions Movement is critical for mobilizing, training, and resourcing the next generation of climate champions within this decade.

Student Energy’s Ecosystem & Student Energy Ventures

How will Student Energy achieve this ambitious climate goal by 2030? Student Energy is already a global leader in this space, with a track record of excellence in engaging 50,000+ global youth from 120 countries in the future of energy over 12 years of operation. This includes mobilizing our youth network of 46+ global chapters, stewarding 281 youth-led energy projects, and offering over 975 hours of mentorship to young energy leaders annually since 2010. 

Student Energy Ventures

The cornerstone of the Solutions Movement will be Ventures, Student Energy’s flagship direct-to-youth funding program aimed at accelerating youth-led clean energy project development globally.  Ventures will offer youth access to an unparalleled level of direct funding, training and entrepreneurial support to develop youth-led clean energy projects. The program will result in a significant deployment of clean energy projects, training of a new skilled workforce equipped with knowledge and experiences needed to build the energy system of the future, and an accelerated global clean energy transition.

Meet Our Champions

One most exciting part of this work to date has been the incredible response from our partner network and larger Student Energy family. This work has already engaged our full team, dozens of current and past program participants, our global alumni network, board of directors and ever-growing network of partners. Student Energy would like to recognize our founding partners for launching the Solutions Movement: the Government of Denmark, New Energy Nexus, and Sustainable Energy for All. 

“Tackling climate change is the biggest challenge of our time and it will not be easy, but seeing the motivation, innovation, creativity, and drive that young people around the world today are showing gives me hope that we will achieve our goals. The kind of ambition demonstrated by Student Energy to support 10,000 youth-led clean energy projects by 2030 is precisely what we need in order to accelerate the energy transition and achieve SDG7. Denmark is proud to be a funding partner of this initiative.” – Asser Rasmussen Berling, Head of Department at the Centre for Global Climate Action at The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, Government of Denmark

“This is the decade to deploy the solutions we have at hand to address the climate crisis, and many of these solutions need to be youth-led. If these businesses are going to last decades, they are going to need the motivation and energy of young people to really disrupt the markets and overcome the incumbents that they’re going to challenge.  We at New Energy Nexus are really excited to partner with Student Energy to develop this movement of guided entrepreneurship.” – Danny Kennedy, CEO of New Energy Nexus

“Every stakeholder has a key role to play as we aim to meet the SDG7 and Paris Agreement targets, including youth, and I am pleased to see the leadership being demonstrated by Student Energy with this Energy Compact commitment. SEforALL’s first ever Youth Summit, held in February 2020, demonstrated our renewed commitment to bringing youth to the fore in this critical year, and it is great to see one of our organizing partners for the Summit come full circle by setting the pace for other young people to follow. This shows that beyond bringing their voices to the table, young people can design and fund the innovations required to achieve our energy and climate goals.” – Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL)

How Can You Help?

At Student Energy, our 2021 focus is to raise $10 Million dollars to launch the pilot phase of the Solutions Movement. Learn more about our work at studentenergy.org/solutionsmovement.
For governments, businesses, and philanthropic foundations, if you would like to explore partnering with Student Energy in this initiative:

Book a meeting with us or email us at letschat@studentenergy.org

If you are not a funder or potential donor, but believe in our important work, we ask that you share this information to help generate additional exposure or connect us to a potential funder you think would be interested in this work. 

NEW YORK, June 25, 2021 – Today, Student Energy, New Energy Nexus, and the Government of Denmark announced the launch of the Student Energy Solutions Movement to world leaders and governments at the United Nations High-level dialogue on Energy, Ministerial Thematic Forums. This new, youth-led, global Energy Compact bridges the gap between youth motivation and action by directly funding and actively supporting the deployment of 10,000 youth-led clean energy projects by 2030. 

As one of the first governments to champion the initiative, the Government of Denmark announced their commitment as the first confirmed funder of the Student Energy Solutions Movement:

“Tackling climate change is the biggest challenge of our time and it will not be easy, but seeing the motivation, innovation, creativity, and drive that young people around the world today are showing gives me hope that we will achieve our goals. The kind of ambition demonstrated by Student Energy to support 10,000 youth-led clean energy projects by 2030 is precisely what we need in order to accelerate the energy transition and achieve SDG7. Denmark is proud to be a funding partner of this initiative,” says Asser Rasmussen Berling, Head of Department at the Centre for Global Climate Action at The Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities, Denmark

Announcing the Solutions Movement Energy Compact

Student Energy’s Solutions Movement Energy Compact aims to resource and deploy 10,000 youth-led clean energy projects by 2030, creating structural change by putting real financial resources in the hands of the world’s most passionate youth.  Funding required to meet this objective is $10 million by December 2021, and $150 million by 2030. The Compact will scale tangible action by young people 18-30 years old through a unique combination of project funding and education, training, and mentorship within Student Energy’s programs ecosystem. 

Ambitions by 2030:

• Launch 10,000 youth-led sustainable energy projects or businesses
• Train 50,000 agile and employable youth workers, with a particular focus on reducing the energy skills gap in developing nations, and for women
• Deploy $150 million toward upskilling, mentoring, and directly financing early- and mid-stage youth-led clean energy initiatives

Quotes: 

Meredith Adler, Executive Director, Student Energy —

“For decades, youth ambition and motivation have existed to transition our world to a more sustainable and equitable energy system, there just simply hadn’t been the resourcing to bridge that motivation into action. In launching the solutions movement, we’re shifting gears into taking action and deploying the energy and technology solutions we already have at our fingertips. I want to commend the High-level Dialogue on Energy for putting youth front and center, and for moving so quickly to get our global network engaged. It’s refreshing to see other organizations move with the same hustle and pace as the world’s young people!”

Danny Kennedy, CEO of New Energy Nexus —

“This is the decade to deploy the solutions we have at hand to address the climate crisis, and many of these solutions need to be youth-led. If these businesses are going to last decades, they are going to need the motivation and energy of young people to really disrupt the markets and overcome the incumbents that they’re going to challenge.  We at New Energy Nexus are really excited to partner with Student Energy to develop this movement of guided entrepreneurship.”

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) —

“Every stakeholder has a key role to play as we aim to meet the SDG7 and Paris Agreement targets, including youth, and I am pleased to see the leadership being demonstrated by Student Energy with this Energy Compact commitment. SEforALL’s first ever Youth Summit, held in February 2020, demonstrated our renewed commitment to bringing youth to the fore in this critical year, and it is great to see one of our organizing partners for the Summit come full circle by setting the pace for other young people to follow. This shows that beyond bringing their voices to the table, young people can design and fund the innovations required to achieve our energy and climate goals.”

Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator —

“I warmly welcome the launch of the Student Energy Compact. It is a strong symbol of the profound shifts taking place in the development sphere where young people are no longer waiting for others to act. They are taking up the baton, driving forward transformation in critical areas, including when it comes to how our world is powered. With more and more groups joining by the day, the United Nations is building a broad coalition of action to spark a clean energy revolution that will improve the lives of millions of people.”

About the UN High Level Dialogue on Energy:

The UN Secretary-General will convene a High-level Dialogue on Energy during the 76th UN General Assembly on September 20, 2021 in New York, to accelerate progress towards achieving SDG7 by 2030. It presents a historic opportunity to provide transformational action in the first years of the Decade of Action. Ministerial-level Thematic Forums are bringing together key stakeholders virtually over five days to mobilize actions on the road to the High-level Dialogue on Energy. Ministers from national governments and leaders from business, civil society, and youth organizations showcased solutions on each priority theme and presented their Energy Compacts, outlining voluntary commitments and actions.

About Student Energy:

Student Energy is the world’s largest youth-led organization empowering young people to accelerate the sustainable energy transition. Since founding in 2009,  Student Energy has worked with thousands of  youth from over 120 countries, to build the knowledge, skills, and networks they need to take action on energy. Student Energy operates on a unique youth empowerment model, which means that initiatives are co-created with youth, for youth.

Student Energy also works with governments, the UN, and other decision makers to facilitate meaningful youth engagement and mobilize resources, coaching, and mentorship to support youth-led work. Student Energy has built coalitions with over 100 diverse partners, such as Indigenous Clean Energy, Sustainable Energy for All, HSBC Global, the Stockholm Environment Institute, DNV, WSP, and national governments like Canada, Denmark, and Sweden. Student Energy has stewarded CAD$10 million+ in funding to date, supported the development of over 280 youth energy projects, held 6 international Student Energy Summits, and attracted over 12.5 million people to its digital energy education platforms.

Media Contacts:

Shakti Ramkumar, Director of Communications and Policy
shakti@studentenergy.org
+1 (604) 445 4306

Meredith Adler, Executive Director
meredith@studentenergy.org
+1 (604) 354 2930

Sean Collins, Co-Founder
scollins@studentenergy.org
+1 (780) 232 0339