Workshop background paper: Energy resilience in Pacific Island countries and territories

This report is a preliminary output, intended to provide an understanding of energy resilience prior to further discussions in a series of workshops on Energy Resilience in Pacific Island Countries and Territories across three thematic areas:

• Planning and investing in more resilient energy systems

• Community energy resilience strategies in response to disasters

• Energy resilience and the political economy of off-grid solar.

Three online interactive workshops will be held on 1-4 December 2020 to gather further stakeholder input to inform research priorities for energy resilience in the Pacific region. This report seeks to inform the discussion by exploring the diversity of priorities and experiences on energy resilience within the Pacific context. The work involved an extensive literature review and targeted stakeholder interviews across the region.

The Energy Resilience in Pacific Island Countries and Territories Workshop Series is a collaboration between University of New South Wales, University of the South Pacific, University of Papua New Guinea and Loughborough University, with contributions from partners ITP Renewables, GSES and CSIRO. We will welcome participants from the Asia-Pacific Solar Research Conference, Urban Resilience Asia Pacific Conference and Geographic Information for Disaster Management Conference. The work is supported by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s International Engagement Program, the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Research Fellowship scheme. This workshop series also builds on previous work, including the Community Energy Resilience and Electricity Systems Workshop Series in 2018 and 2019 which focused on the UK, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Dvorakova et al. 2020).