Group for the Environment, Renewable Energy and Solidarity

Description

Geres is an international development NGO that works to improve living conditions and to fight climate change and its impacts.

It promotes an ambitious, socially just energy transition as the main lever of what it calls climate solidarity. Geres encourages the development and spread of innovative, local solutions, supports territorial climate and energy policies, and mobilizes public and private actors to act and to support the most vulnerable. It builds local economic sectors, since they create jobs and help make solutions last, and it works on capacity building so communities can drive their own change.

It is present through permanent representations in Europe, Africa and Asia, running dozens of projects with tens of thousands of direct beneficiaries. Its work covers clean energy production, energy efficiency, economic development, local land-use policy and climate change response.

Geres was founded in Marseille on 14 September 1976, originally as a group of researchers developing solar energy as an alternative to oil. It later expanded into renewable energy more broadly, then into environmental protection, and took its current name in 2008. It has worked in countries including Morocco, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mali, Benin, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, and in 2004 launched CO2Solidaire, described as the first French carbon offsetting programme.