Australia’s electricity and energy industries are transitioning in response to political, policy financial and consumer forces calling for actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and human impacts on climate change. This transition provides an economic development opportunity for Indigenous people in regional and remote communities.

Indigenous people, and the organisations created to determine and manage land from native title processes, potentially have access to vast tracts of land that could provide the opportunity for Indigenous people to be involved in the large-scale renewable energy industry.

This paper provides context to the renewable opportunity, outlining Indigenous people’s current interactions with renewable energy projects in regional and remote communities, and highlights the potential — and challenges.

Given the opportunity that the energy transition provides to Indigenous communities and businesses by way of being an integral stakeholder in the build out of renewable energy assets, and given the continued expansive role of governments in interventions into electricity supply to support renewable energy assets than it would be another missed policy opportunity to not focus on how these barriers are effectively addressed.