Indigenous Clean Energy Enterprises in Australia

For remote and regionally based communities, access and cost of primary services such as power and water are ever increasing, and in the face of the global transition to clean energy, building energy infrastructure serves as a financial imperative. For Indigenous regional and remote communities, establishing economic authority over energy assets and their operation is a key lever for self-determination. However, the shaping role of state authority and history set a structural backdrop to the operations of Indigenous owned energy infrastructure. This chapter examines the role jurisdictional context plays in the context of Indigenous clean energy enterprises in two Australian states and the Northern Territory as a backdrop to the embodied experience of three Indigenous business leaders who manage the tensions that geo-political context raises as they work towards Indigenous self-determined aspirations.