March 03, 2025

Beyond the grid: How grassroots innovators are powering Colombia’s future

topic:	Renewables
tags:	#Sustainable Development, #renewable energy
located:	Colombia
by:	Cristian Gil-Sanchez

While a substantial portion of Colombia's energy supply comes from hydropower, climate change-induced droughts are jeopardising its stability, posing a risk to energy security. Additionally, the country relies on unsustainable sources like oil and natural gas and suffers annual economic losses of up to $11 billion due to poor energy efficiency.

Initiatives to shift energy systems to renewable sources such as solar and wind farms are often spearheaded by the government and private sector, excluding communities and microentrepreneurs whose perspectives are crucial to decision-making and implementation processes towards sustainable energy transitions.

From climate action to education, gender equality, income generation and more, the achievement of many global goals hinges on adequate access to reliable energy. Given this interdependence, delivering energy access to all means working across regions, sectors, levels and disciplines to develop a new generation of sustainable and equitable solutions. 

To achieve Colombia’s ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) targets set at COP26, actors at all levels must be mobilised for an inclusive energy transition. This means including communities and microentrepreneurs from consultation right through to design and implementation.

Our project, titled Exploring the incorporation of grassroots innovation into just energy transition: Learnings from Colombia, aims to advance an inclusive approach to the energy transition by supporting grassroots innovations for a just transition and adopting a ground-up perspective for discussions that tend to be reserved for experts and policymakers. Specifically, we are working with designers of a lithium battery to provide small-scale vendors in Bogotá an affordable and sustainable energy source that supports local innovation.

The project, which was lauded in July 2024, is funded by Engineering X, an international collaboration founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd’s Register Foundation.

Facilitating collaborative innovation in energy transitions 

Complex challenges that involve diverse stakeholders require innovative approaches. Our research project is integrating grassroot innovations into Colombia’s energy transition using the Simplexity Framework – a systems approach that considers all elements of a problem and the way these interact with each other and the system as a whole.

This approach helps visualise and integrate non-expert perspectives by involving communities in energy transition discussions. For instance, while governments often focus on large-scale innovations like solar-powered urban furniture, these solutions are often inaccessible -particularly in rural areas - and fail to reflect the lived realities of many. In contrast, innovations such as mobile solar-powered coffee and internet shops offer more practical, community-driven solutions that provide essential services and boost local livelihoods.

Accelerating interdisciplinary collaboration at grassroot levels 

Enabling interaction and integration of local voices, innovators, regulators, users and citizens offers  a unique and more complete perspective on facilitating energy transitions.

Community members are often the people closest to the solutions being developed and will be most familiar with what works best and what does not. Including their perspectives from the outset ensures that the solutions developed are relevant, usable and sustainable in the long run.

Microentrepreneurs within these communities can provide valuable insights on the economic viability of new initiatives while sharing their learnings on how best to introduce new products and solutions that may not be familiar to users in their contexts. Microentrepreneurs are more flexible, resilient and fast responders to clients and citizens' demands, as opposed to large, established organisations that often require more time and resources to adapt. This kind of interaction could be beneficial for all stakeholders within energy systems.

For instance, by listening to and supporting a local developer producing lithium batteries in Bogotá, our project helped them reduce the weight of their batteries from 52kgs to 2kgs. This breakthrough has the potential to provide communities with improved batteries and higher energy efficiency in their day-to-day lives.

Elsewhere, regulators can provide know-how to ensure the effective delivery of energy to communities, especially in places where they have worked for long periods of time, while also seeing that communities are not exploited.

Towards sustainable futures

Our work -  recognised following the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers symposium and funded by Engineering X under its Safer Complex Systems programme - sits at the intersection of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contributes to tackling global challenges. By applying a systems approach, we have developed a holistic understanding of the barriers to grassroots innovation in Bogotá’s just energy transition. Through collaboration and inclusive decision-making, we aim to bridge existing gaps and drive a more equitable and accelerated energy transition across Colombia.

Throughout 2025, we are on track to develop two solar modules designed specifically for the needs of local small businesses, expand our outreach to a broader network of street vendors in the city and collaborate with local government to ensure alignment with existing policies.

Every local intervention matters. We must take advantage of existing opportunities, collaborate across silos and leverage global events such as COP30 in Brazil to share effective public policies as well as concrete and impactful examples from the communities.

While our project is in progress, it would not have been possible without a meeting of the minds and hearts of experts and citizens. We must continue to bring together experts from across sectors to forge a new generation of partnerships to develop and promote engineering, science, technology and innovation. 

Cristian Gil-Sánchez is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Instituto para la Accción Pública.

Image by Néstor Morales.