Renewable energy and materials contribute to the reduction of poverty since the production of renewable energy is more work intensive than creating fossil energy or non-renewable materials. Please consider renewable materials as well, since not all of the used materials are from renewable resources today, and the significance of materials are the similar to energy.

The other significant difference is the new renewable jobs are in rural areas where the unemployment rate is higher, and the mean income is lower.

The decentralized energy systems provide opportunities for small and medium-size companies to compete (e.g., rooftop solar installation and maintenance).

The shift from the fossil economy to renewable energy and material based economy add research, manufacturing and construction jobs to the job market until the change is finished (40-90 years).

All of these jobs have a multiplicator effect on the economy, each newly created job in the renewable industry creates 2 jobs in the economy (multipliers are from Leontief's input-output matrix).

Besides the jobs, energy companies and states have a lower chance to exploit citizens since people can afford the investment to use the free energy sources directly, without 'helping hands'. For instance, the unjustified costs of fossil energy production, the margin, the taxes, the grid losses and the feedstock costs could be saved by a rooftop solar. The rooftop solar capital cost/produced kwh is lower than nuclear or coal capital/kwh.

Please find my study of social, economic and environmental impacts of bioenergy production: Article Use of Linear Programming to Optimize the Social, Environmen...

"Renewable energy projects developed in scores of developing countries–many with international donor assistance–have demonstrated that renewable energy can contribute to poverty alleviation directly by providing the energy needed for creating businesses and jobs, turning locally available resources into productive economic assets". From REN 21 Report. You can read more on this at http://www.worldwatch.org/brain/media/pdf/pubs/ren21/ren21-1.pdf

Alternative forms of energy can provide access to energy to people who might not have such access. In Fiji many people in squatter settlements use photo-voltaic energy as they do not have access to electricity from the Fiji Electricity Authority. They have low needs for electricity, just light in the evening and opportunity to charge their mobile phones. Solar panels and batteries for such needs are relatively cheap and many people use them. Would not be an option, if they had much demand to run TV, fridges, washing-machines or water cookers....

Renewable energies include the idea of productive decentralization and small scale, which can favor entrepreneurship in depressed areas, to give imaginative responses to the implementation and development of dispersed production units (biogas, solar, wind). Just as agricultural mechanization generated great mechanical inventors in the old iron workshops, "energy mechanization" can generate small innovators / entrepreneurs among the most skilled.

In itself self-produced and dispersed energy can reduce the cost of living to the most disadvantaged social groups, or even generate some income (think of the use of roofs of houses to generate solar energy by municipal public enterprises). But it can also reduce poverty by encouraging the emergence of these mini-innovators.

They are suggestions at a purely theoretical level, without knowledge of experiences in that sense.

I do not see the way renewable energy can help specifically the poors to generate additional income. No more than the rest of the people.

On the other side, renewable energy offgrid impacts on the life conditions of people without electricity access, including the reduction of energy cost.

You can see this impact measure in Peru:"From candles to light"

https://20f689bf-a-25cc8b4f-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/accioname.org/fundame/difusion-y-sensibilizacion/publicaciones-y-presentaciones/2015%20ImpactEvaluationRuralElectrification.pdf?

Local renewable energy sources can be used for electricity generation as an alternative for fuels. And electrictiy access is one of the factors that can help some productive activities (but not the only one) in rural areas.

I wrote an article about energy access impact in two amazonian comunities and problems with PV system for rural electrification:

Article Assessment of socioeconomic impacts of access to electricity...

Article Issues in PV systems applied to rural electrification in Brazil

Hope it could help you!