On the island of Kioa in Fiji, the community’s diesel generator provides light and enough power to charge laptops, phones and headtorches for six hours each evening. But its limits are felt most sharply in everyday routines – laundry is done after dark, fresh produce spoils without daytime refrigeration, and small businesses struggle to operate beyond subsistence.
The island’s inhabitants are among the 730 million people worldwide without access to a dependable power supply, a reminder that energy transition is not only about reducing emissions.
The Pacific's contribution to global emissions is negligible – Fiji accounts for a mere 0.004% of the total, despite being the largest emitter of all Pacific nations. Yet these communities are moving forward with energy sector and development partners to co-create solutions that are reliable, affordable, clean and accessible to all.
The Pacific is made up of more than 1000 inhabited islands across 186 million square kilometres of ocean. These vast distances and highly dispersed populations mean that energy access is uneven, costly, and vulnerable to disruption. Vanuatu and Solomon Islands have some of the lowest grid connectivity access rates in the world, and eight Pacific nations rank among the top 30 globally for the most expensive electricity tariffs.
So, can community-centred, resilient and sustainable energy solutions be rolled out at scale across the Pacific’s most remote islands? A recent report by the UNDP and University of New South Wales, The Last Nautical Mile, says "yes", if solutions are grounded in strong partnerships, innovative financing, and inclusive locally-led planning and management.
The Fiji Rural Electrification Fund (FREF) project is one such example. FREF was piloted on the island of Vio, on the western side of Viti Levu, and will soon be implemented on the islands of Kioa, Yadrana and Yacata, with plans to scale to more than 300 communities across Fiji. The project is funded by the governments of Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, with the UN Development Programme serving as the implementing partner responsible for overall delivery and reporting. Fijian solar companies have built, operated and maintained mini-grids through joint ventures with island cooperatives, supported by the UNDP and the Department of Energy. Affordability is ensured through community-approved prices, pre-paid metering systems and reinvestment of tariffs into a fund for operations, maintenance and scaling. Centering communities in planning and management activities establishes local ownership, equitable solutions, fair energy distribution, and meaningful participation in decision-making.
Cultural and indigenous knowledge creates the adaptive strength needed for long-term energy solutions.
Part of this success comes from recognising who uses electricity. In Pacific communities, women, youth, and marginalised groups are the primary users of energy for cooking, lighting, education and small business. The FREF project designs systems around these daily patterns, working with the groups to ensure that energy infrastructure reflects lived realities rather than abstract demand models.
In tandem, cultural and indigenous knowledge creates the adaptive strength needed for long-term energy solutions. For instance, in the solar power sector, local understanding aids the placement and maintenance of solar panels, identifies appropriate sites based on traditional hazard awareness, and establishes community-led maintenance rosters that mirror customary governance systems. These practices demonstrate how traditional wisdom can strengthen technical sustainability.
On Vio Island, FREF is building the technical skills of community members, with growing efforts to train local technicians – specifically young people – to handle basic system repairs and monitoring. This model will be replicated across other islands, including Kioa. It reduces dependency on external contractors, strengthens local ownership, and shifts communities from the position of beneficiaries to partners in generating energy resilience.
The Pacific’s quiet lesson from FREF is that relationships are infrastructure. Technology matters, but systems last when they are shaped by local knowledge, when all community members are engaged in decision-making, and when different partners come together with a shared purpose.
The last nautical mile is not the end of the journey. It is the beginning of a new global understanding of energy access, one that has people at its centre and sees energy not as a commodity but as a source of resilience.
The FREF project has received funding from the governments of Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Aquila Van Keuk was involved in the project management of The Last Nautical Mile.
