The Papua New Guinea Electrification Partnership: Power and diplomacy in the Pacific

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Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the Pacific’s largest country with one of the world’s lowest rates of energy access (13%). To address this development challenge, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the USA joined hands with the PNG government in late 2018 and signed the PNG Electrification Partnership. The Partnership aims to electrify 70% of PNG’s population by 2030. It is an unprecedented multilateral initiative that represents a major shift in political synergies between and amongst members of the Global North and South. The US$1.7 billion Partnership based on commitments from these four OECD donor nations is significant for two reasons: first, it comes at a time when China’s influence in the Pacific is growing, resulting in strategic geopolitical tensions. Second, the Partnership signifies energy access as a tool for foreign diplomacy and the scale of resource commitment is likely to shape energy discourse across much of energy poor Asia and Africa. For these reasons, the Partnership is too important to fail. However, given PNG’s long history of electrification challenges and little information currently available about the Partnership’s own workings, the Partnership faces an uphill task. In this Perspective, we draw on PNG’s unique context and past experiences to flag potential bottlenecks and issues for consideration as stakeholders work to meet the Partnership’s aims over the coming decade.