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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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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This study evaluates whether residential rooftop solar can serve as a preventative solution to energy insecurity among low- to moderate-income households.

Using a national, matched sample of solar and non-solar households based on detailed and address-specific data, we find that solar leads to large, robust and salient reductions in five indicators of energy insecurity.

Moreover, the benefits of solar ‘spill over’ to improve a household’s ability to pay other energy bills.

• an individual is unable to pay their electricity bill
• they receive a disconnection notice (46% less often)
• a reduction in the likelihood they reduce their energy consumption to save money on energy costs (15% less often)
• a reduction in the likelihood they forgo expenses on household necessities to pay an energy bill, and
• a reduction in the likelihood their home is kept at an uncomfortable temperature.

The results suggest that rooftop solar may be an effective tool for policymakers who seek to reduce energy insecurity.

Authors: Yozwiak, M.; Barbose, G.; Carley, S.; Forrester, S.; Konisky, D.; Memmott, T., et al. (2025). The effect of residential solar on energy insecurity among low- to moderate-income households. Nature Energy, 10(5), 569-580. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01730-y Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1st561b6

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Energy communities or cooperatives enable differing communities to guide the development of new net zero energy technologies and attract social and economic benefits including infrastructure ownership, as in the example of Maori energy trusts in New Zealand or the Canadian Indigenous Clean Energy initiative.

These energy cooperative initiatives are a crucial piece of the decarbonisation puzzle but represent complex legal structures to enable community collaboration and accelerate decarbonisation.

Building on the increasing focus on how to effectively conceptualise and regulate energy cooperatives, this article introduces a new framework underpinned by the seven pillars of energy cooperation related to the development and operation of energy communities pursuant to energy justice.

Our study addresses the capacity of cooperatives to resolve, incorporate, and act in accordance with energy justice principles, and highlights the unique character of energy communities and energy cooperatives, discussing the need to provide them with a novel policy approach.

To satisfy these needs, the paper offers an original conceptual framework based on a comparative evaluation of the International Cooperative Alliance’s principles juxtaposed with the tenets of energy justice.

The examination is enriched by references to practical case studies of cooperative enterprises and movements situated in cooperative theory and the growing corpus of energy law literature examining energy cooperatives and energy communities.

As a result, this paper introduces the seven pillars of energy cooperation driven by energy justice: participation, independence, responsibility, solidarity, security, decentralisation, and education.

The pillars may serve as relevant principles for regulatory reform to effectively create and manage energy cooperatives and energy communities as multifaceted entities providing a potentially powerful pathway for states and communities to reduce their emissions to net zero by 2050.

Authors: Madeline Taylor, Nischala McDonnell, Peter Davies & Stefan Trück. (2025) Scaling agrivoltaics: planning, legal, and market pathways to readiness. Sustainability Science 20:4, pages 1499-1517.

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This article proposes a transitional energy justice framework to analyse a "green" transition and offers recommendations to transform the realities of the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America.

We share our perspectives as mestiza, Wapichan and Kichwa women through narratives.

In the discussion, we compare previous research on environmental and energy justice to identify the ways in which global energy governance can implement fairer and more equitable projects in the future, such as respect for land tenure and more-than-human beings.

Additionally, temporality and relationality act as tools for global energy governance institutions. Temporality in transitional energy justice has to do with healing historical violence across generations, whereas relationality means building respectful relationships with each involved Indigenous community.

The article concludes by providing policy recommendations that emphasise strengthening local governance – deep engagement of state and non-state actors with each community – along with international policy-making to prevent energy-related negative externalities and legislation to facilitate Indigenous self-determination to build their futures.

Authors: Suanne Mistel Segovia-Tzompa, Immaculata Casimero, Marisol García Apagüeño, When the past meets the future: Latin American Indigenous futures, transitional justice and global energy governance, Futures, Volume 163, 2024

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Thanks for the use of the cover photo British Embassy of the Kichwa community of Añangu, within Yasuní National Park, which has solar power.

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The prospect of large-scale renewable energy projects being developed on lands over which Traditional Owners hold rights and interests is likely to present risks in the distribution of socio-economic and environmental impacts, as well as opportunities for Aboriginal benefit, through partnerships, equity and ownership, employment, training, sustainable income generation, and potentially through improved access to affordable energy.

Modular in design, renewable energy technologies have a diverse range of possible applications, and the opportunities for Aboriginal leadership, participation and benefit are undoubtedly greater, more varied and across a wider number of scales than the limited number of case studies examined here.

Projects may be developed unilaterally by Aboriginal communities and PBCs for discrete aims of community development, household energy security and enterprise development; others may be undertaken in alliance with private sector developers or the state and progressed through agreement making processes.

This paper proposes that while the benefits and risks of specific projects are likely best assessed on a case-by case basis, a number of common themes- such as the efficacy of genuine FPIC processes- are of utility across scales of development, from small to large.

The extent to which Aboriginal decision-making is at the centre, rather than periphery, of renewable energy policy and project development remains the key to socially sustainable project development, as well as to any estimate of the success of the renewable energy transition currently underway in the North-West.

Author: Brad Riley in Nulungu Research Papers, The University of Notre Dame Australia (2021)

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Australia’s Pilbara and Kimberley regions have very high rates of Indigenous land tenure, whilst hosting some of world’s best co-located solar and wind energy resources. Simultaneously, technological advances in energy transmission and distribution raises the possibility of renewable energy export into Southeast Asia.

This paper builds upon previous work (O’Neill, L., Thorburn, K. and Hunt, J. (2019), Ensuring Indigenous benefit from large-scale renewable energy projects: Drawing on experience from extractive industry agreement making, Working Paper No. 127, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra) in considering the opportunities and risks of renewable energy developments for Indigenous communities in these regions. It considers renewable energy developments at two different scales – utility-scale and smaller dispersed models, finding that communities are more likely to obtain broader social and economic benefits from developments in which they have a significant financial stake and have power over aspects of development.

Proponents of utility-scale developments may negotiate agreements to offer Indigenous people access to energy, financial compensation for land use, or a stake in ownership. Yet, in considering research from the extractives industry in relation to agreement making we find that broader social and economic benefits for communities are often less than predicted.

Research from Canada that looks at the potential for Indigenous ownership of smaller scale renewable energy developments to address local need and benefit, highlights the importance of First Nations’ voices in discussions of regional economic development associated with the coming energy transition.

Authors: Thorburn K., O’Neill L., Hunt J., Riley B., (2019), Renewable energy projects on the Indigenous estate: Identifying risks and opportunities of utility-scale and dispersed models, Working Paper no. 130, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

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Free prior informed consent (FPIC) is frequently cited as a legal standard for the development of extractives projects which impact Indigenous groups. The basic concept is that mining impacts should not occur without the group’s FPIC, but that simplicity hides domestic complexity.

This paper outlines the current state of FPIC at the international level, examines some common difficulties, and then describes Australian domestic law regarding these issues.

Author: John Southalan, “The FPIC Fixation: Indigenous - Mining Law, Internationally and Australia”, International Mining and Oil & Gas Law, Development, and Investment 22A-1 (Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, 2019)

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The front page image used in the report is from here.

In the coming decades Australia is set to see a dramatic expansion in renewable energy projects. It is likely that many of these will occur on land subject to Indigenous rights and interests.

The paper concludes that while the guiding principles and the content of access and benefit sharing agreements may be quite similar between the extractive and renewable industries, there are a number of critical differences between these industries that may impact agreement content.

These are that renewable energy developments use a completely renewable resource; are usually not limited to specific geographic areas (although certain areas are more conducive to both wind and solar projects); generally require a much greater land area; have physical impacts that are almost completely reversible; affect visual amenity over greater distances (in the case of wind); are potentially in place for more than one generation; and may allow Traditional Owners continued land access.

Additionally, the use of native title land for renewable energy projects will raise different issues for native title holders and companies than the renewable energy industry’s experience to date with neighbouring communities in high population areas.

Renewable energy companies would be well advised to heed the changing attitudes and experience of the extractive industry over the past two decades in relation to best practice.

Authors: L O’Neill, K Thorburn and J Hunt

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O’Neill, L., Thorburn, K. and Hunt, J. (2019), Ensuring Indigenous benefit from large-scale renewable energy projects: Drawing on experience from extractive industry agreement making, Working Paper No. 127, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

Thanks for use of the photo Anthony Ketland.