Australia's Pacific energy pledges need grassroots retail model to succeed

Australia made a sweeping promise in 2018: Papua New Guinea would reach 70 percent electrification by 2030, and full access by 2050. It was an ambitious target for a country where roughly one in five households currently have power. The commitment came as part of an international consortium effort, and the intention was genuine. But eight years later, the gap between what was pledged and what's actually being delivered has become impossible to ignore.

The problem isn't ambition. It's architecture. Australia's main vehicles for this work—REnew Pacific, the government's signature small-scale electrification scheme, and Pawarim Komuniti, the marquee project in Papua New Guinea—both rely on the same fundamental approach: grants funding individual projects, evaluated and administered from the center, one village at a time. Some of these projects transform lives. But transformation at this pace cannot possibly meet the scale of the need. A central bureaucracy simply cannot process tens of thousands of applications fast enough. The math doesn't work. By 2030, Australia will fall well short of its own targets.

The shortfall matters beyond the numbers. The Pacific is already absorbing shocks from global oil volatility tied to Middle East instability. Energy access isn't abstract—it's survival, livelihood, and development. And yet the current model treats it as a series of isolated interventions rather than a systemic challenge requiring systemic solutions.

There is, however, a network already in place that could change this equation. Across the Pacific, in villages that might seem to have nothing, there is almost always a shopkeeper. These retailers—often women—once sold only basics: noodles, rice, tinned fish. Today they sell petrol, electronics, boom boxes. More tellingly, they sell mobile phone plans in partnership with the region's major telecommunications providers. Walk through any village in Solomon Islands or elsewhere, and you will find a local telco agent, sometimes operating from a tin shed, but operating nonetheless. This network is ubiquitous, trusted, and proven.

If shopkeepers can reliably distribute telecommunications services across remote Pacific economies, why not energy? Modern renewable technology—internet-enabled solar kits and battery systems—can be installed at a fraction of the cost of traditional infrastructure. The model would work like this: local shopkeepers become energy retailers, backed by remote technical support for any issues that arise. They install systems, manage customer relationships, troubleshoot problems, and keep money circulating within their own communities rather than siphoning it into distant diesel supply chains.

This isn't theory. On Savo Island in Solomon Islands, a pilot project has already tested the model. Dozens of households received electricity for the first time, at costs far lower than they would have paid for diesel or kerosene. The shopkeeper-retailers became local technicians, ensuring problems were fixed immediately. The energy access enabled complementary infrastructure—freezers, for instance—that allowed a local fish-trading business to take root. Jobs stayed in the village. Money stayed in the village. Development happened faster.

The Savo initiative reveals something crucial about development work in the Pacific: working with local agency, rather than trying to replace it, is not only cheaper but dramatically faster. A centralized model assumes expertise flows downward from cities to villages. A retail model assumes expertise already exists locally and simply needs to be activated and supported. One approach treats communities as problems to be solved. The other treats them as partners with existing competency.

Australia will present its Pacific energy initiatives at COP31 in Türkiye in November. The question is whether those initiatives will withstand scrutiny as genuine game-changers or be exposed as well-intentioned gestures. To truly be a partner of choice in the Pacific, Australia needs to work not just with governments but with the people and communities already doing the work of survival and exchange. The energy pledge is the ideal place to start—by trusting the shopkeepers who are already there.