Four remote First Nations communities will be transitioned away from a diesel powered electricity supply to solar and battery storage-based microgrids, as part of a federally funded program supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena).

Canada is home to around 240 remote communities that rely on diesel fuel to heat and provide electricity to their homes. This system of heating and electricity generation comes with significant social, economic, and environmental costs that Indigenous governments and businesses are working hard to address through clean energy development. For those governments and businesses who seek to transition away from diesel and toward cleaner, locally produced energy, there are a number of barriers to overcome. Key among them are regulatory and legislative roadblocks that make Indigenous leadership in the energy transition especially challenging.

As part of the Pembina Institute’s Rethinking Regulation to Decarbonize Canada series, we examine the regulatory and legislative challenges that remote Indigenous communities face as they seek to reduce diesel use and decarbonize remote microgrids. In particular, we focus on the regulatory systems of four jurisdictions in Canada: British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon.

Authors: He, Emily, Arthur Bledsoe and Fibha Nazim. Decarbonizing Remote Indigenous Communities: Regulatory reform in B.C. and the territories. The Pembina Institute, 2025.

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Governments in the United States and Canada have already realised that establishing the right partnerships with First Nations in the clean energy transition is an investment decision.

Australia’s remote landscapes soak up some of the highest levels of solar irradiation on the planet. And as they also attract increasing interest in the renewable energy bonanza, Indigenous landowners are positioning to power up their communities and a brighter, cleaner future. Jordyn Beazley reports.

Residents of the Iltjiltajarri Aboriginal community in central Australia used to have to truck in diesel along hundreds of kilometres of corrugated, dusty roads.

Diesel powered the pumps that drew life-giving water out of the ground, but was so prohibitively expensive that 30 years ago the community pooled their funds and bought an early-model solar system and battery.