In Australia, prepayment is ubiquitous in remote First Nations communities but is rarely used or banned in other locations.

Prepayment for household electricity services disrupts energy access by privatising the risks of disconnection within vulnerable households, justifying critical appraisal of the rationalisations and policy settings for its use.

Despite a growing literature documenting the potential harms of prepay and its concentration in remote and predominantly Indigenous households, these issues have received limited attention in Australian energy policy debates.

To progress the policy discourse, this qualitative study examines the policy origins and dominant rationales for use of prepay in different parts of Australia using causal process tracing.

Drawing on an original dataset of over 1650 publicly accessible documents from the period 1973–2023, a chronology is established showing that prepay systems were first introduced in remote Indigenous communities in Queensland and the Northern Territory with subsequent use in varying contexts in Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia.

Policy motivations differ between grid interconnected regions and remote Indigenous settlements.

In interconnected regions, prepay emerged as a voluntary product associated with competitive retail market reforms and was subject to varying degrees of regulation but is now either banned or no longer offered by retailers.

By contrast, in remote and some urban Indigenous communities prepay endures as a default or mandatory payment system – highlighting how settler colonial energy policies have consistently prioritised supply-side objectives within under-served communities subject to past and present injustices including pervasive energy insecurity.

Author: Sally Wilson, Disrupting household energy rights: Examining the policy origins of prepayment for electricity services in Australia, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 124, 2025,

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This study offers insights from a unique case of meso-level collective action by First Nations in British Columbia, Canada, aimed at transformative electricity institutional change.

We collate regulatory and advocacy text to characterise the range of proposed First Nation Power Authority models and their placement along a continuum of conformative to transformative energy justice.

Interviews with knowledge holders from 14 First Nations offer insight into motivations behind transformative change and how it is shaped by historical injustice alongside practical community objectives around energy security, resilience, and community development.

First Nations narratives of electricity transformation are aligned with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and with goals of self-determination and incorporate relational and regional approaches.

These findings validate theoretical frameworks of transformational energy justice (Avelino et al., 2024; Elmallah et al., 2022).

Much of the groundwork has been laid by the collective and the regulator, while new legislation has opened a window of opportunity to increase Indigenous participation and control in the electricity sector.

Authors: Christina E. Hoicka, Adam Regier, Anna L. Berka, Sara Chitsaz, Kayla Klym, “Stretch and transform” for energy justice: Indigenous advocacy for institutional transformative change of electricity in British Columbia, Canada, Energy Policy, Volume 202, 2025

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Australia’s story of the energy transition is most visible in the uptake of large-scale solar and wind farms or now prolific rooftop solar. Less visible is the role of renewable energy in efforts to reinstate life and land to Australia’s Indigenous peoples.

This paper tells the story of off-grid remote renewable energy rollouts in Indigenous communities in Northern Australia.

While the analysis is specific to Australia, it has broader lessons about incorporating Indigenous governance approaches into renewable energy rollouts so that Indigenous communities in financially constrained contexts share in the intended benefit of installed electricity systems.

Using energy sociotechnical imaginaries and energy justice, the paper explores the emergence, impact and contemporary legacy of Bushlight (2002–2013), a government funded renewable energy program delivered by an Indigenous-led non-profit organisation.

Bushlight was part of Australia’s early efforts to build its renewable energy sector, operating with a dual mandate of decarbonisation and community development in Indigenous Homelands communities.

The analysis of sociotechnical imaginaries explains how collectives come together to anticipate and address distributional justice issues through policy development and how these collectives and their vision for renewable energy evolve through implementation.

Tracing how these imaginaries extend into the present highlights the influence of broader socio-political dynamics shaping Indigenous-settler-colonial relations.

The paper’s findings have important implications for decolonisation, supporting Indigenous people to live on and care for Country while retaining their right to essential services.

This paper serves as a reminder that financial constraints can manifest unevenly within as well as between geopolitical segments. Governance approaches need to reflect this internal unevenness and can assist in addressing this unevenness through renewable energy rollouts.

Secondly, this case highlights the influence of governance and regulation in supporting equitable private sector delivery and operation of renewable energy power systems in complex and financially constrained contexts within high income national contexts. This serves as a reminder for donors, policy makers and private sector of the risks that accompany uncritically replicating energy supply arrangements in high income countries, often adopted by multi-lateral finance institutions and donors in the global south.

Thirdly, this paper reflects on energy policy and implementation as a force for supporting or weakening Citizen-State relations.

Finally, this paper provides an account of electrification through renewable energy rollouts that centred on Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. In doing so, this contributes to a broader understanding of electrification beyond Atlantic-centred “global” histories.

Author: Anna Cain, Australian National University, College of Engineering and Computing and Cybernetics, ACT, Australia, published online 25 January 2024.

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Reconciliation is about the genuine restructuring and transformation of the relationships between Indigenous and settler people.

Although renewable energy has not been inherently positive for Indigenous peoples, Indigenous communities in Canada have been participating in renewable energy production, which presents a potential pathway to reconciliation, climate change mitigation and a just energy transition.

This study explores whether and to what extent community energy—defined by deep engagement in process, as well as local and collective benefits—relates to elements of participation associated with reconciliation, both conceptually and empirically.

A conceptual framework based in community energy was developed to characterise and analyse 194 renewable energy projects associated with Indigenous communities. This framework considered ‘community’ as belonging to traditional land, places where Indigenous people live, and as local authority, such as the Indigenous political organisation of a settlement or reserve. Projects were examined by legal form, project location, and control.

The findings do not provide strong indications of reconciliation.

We suggest that one pathway to reconciliation is equity ownership, which has risen over time, although most projects located on traditional territories and Indigenous communities generally have minority or no ownership. There were no projects associated with Métis communities, and only 6 associated with Inuit communities.

Institutional change requires implementation of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and extensive policy supports.

Authors: Christina E. Hoicka, Katarina Savic, Alicia Campney, Reconciliation through renewable energy? A survey of Indigenous communities, involvement, and peoples in Canada, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 74, 2021

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