Policy and legal framework for Renewable energy in Zambia: Opportunities and challenges

Zambia has been experiencing extreme weather events, particularly droughts, floods, shortened rainy seasons, high temperatures, and frequent zoonotic, human, and food crop diseases. These events have put adaptation and mitigation on the policy map. The role of renewable energy has increasingly featured in policy discussions to reduce deforestation and forest degradation to build community resilience and climate change adaptive capacities and to drive socio-economic development. An analysis of relevant official documents, and interviews with key informants, reveal a lack of investment in renewable energy, limited policy mainstreaming and alignment, and low levels of adoption of renewable energy sources. As a result of these findings, this brief calls particularly for a multisectoral approach, robust awareness campaigns, a coherent policy environment, and increased institutional capacities to boost investments in the renewable energy sector.The authors would like to acknowledge Envirosmart Solutions for the logistical support to facilitate the interactions with key informants during data collection. This material has been produced under the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme, which brings together leading research organizations and is led out of the STEER centre, Loughborough University. CCG is funded by UK aid from the UK government. However, the views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the UK government's official policies