Join the next ‘Powering Up’ clean energy workshop being held in Rockhampton, Queensland on 14-15 May 2025.

We're currently in the upside down and mob must band together to protect Country and revive this land we're on.

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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I really want to see us put renewables into remote community energy systems and reduce the amount of diesel that we’re burning. 

The biggest challenge to an equitable energy transition in Australia is that equity is not the core value of the energy industry.

The transition to distributed clean energy has a lot of benefits for remote First Nations communities, but there are barriers in place that mean our people are being left behind and left out.

It is crucial to question who has the authority to mandate renewable energy projects and who their beneficiaries are. In the energy field, power has remained, for the most part, in the hands of settler nations institutions and private energy companies. Although renewable energy resources are mostly located on Indigenous traditional territories, not all Indigenous communities benefit from the energy transition. The fact that Indigenous peoples are given only a limited voice or power over the transformation of their ancestral territories puts them in a particularly challenging position regarding their participation in the energy transition. Indeed, defending their interests is complex, due to the vagueness and ambiguity surrounding the question of Indigenous national sovereignty and self-determination in Australia and Canada.

This paper, A just energy transition for Indigenous peoples: From ideal deliberation to fairness in Canada and Australia (published 2024), by Fabienne Rioux-Gobeil and Annick Thomassin from the Australian National University, considers who benefits from energy projects and who bears the consequences.

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Thanks for use of the photo Karsten Würth 

The global call to address climate change and advance sustainable development has created rapid growth in research, investment, and policymaking regarding the renewable energy transition of Indigenous communities.

From a rightsholder perspective, Indigenous Peoples' vision of sustainability, autonomy, and sovereignty should guide research on their energy needs.

In this paper, we present a multi-method, inductive examination to identify gaps between Indigenous communities' expressed needs and rights, and the questions researchers and policymakers investigate in energy transition research conducted in the context of Indigenous communities located in Canada.

We combine a systematic review of the extant literature, a scoping review of the grey literature on off-grid communities by Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments and non-governmental policy bodies, qualitative primary data collected via fieldwork, and an in-depth study of an Indigenous-led renewable energy transition study conducted by Haíɫzaqv Nation's Climate Action Team.

We holistically examine these different perspectives and identify emergent themes to recommend ways to bridge the gaps between off-grid renewable energy research and stated Indigenous community priorities.

Specifically, we recommend designing equitable research practices, understanding community worldviews, developing holistic research goals, respecting Indigenous data sovereignty, and sharing or co-developing knowledge with communities to align with community priorities closely.

Authors: Serasu Duran, Jordyn Hrenyk, Feyza G. Sahinyazan, Emily Salmon, 'Re-righting renewable energy research with Indigenous communities in Canada’, Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 445, 2024

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Including First Nations peoples in energy projects on their Traditional Lands can have far-reaching positive impacts and be mutually beneficial.

Western Australia has very strong solar resources and nationally competitive wind resources that are largely untapped. There is clearly much potential for the development of clean energy projects on land where First Nations communities hold an interest.

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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