Environmental and Social Benefits

• Supports the clean energy transition on Aboriginal land by co-developing renewable energy strategies with Local Aboriginal Land Councils (LALCs), beginning with community leadership, consent, and participation. This approach strengthens climate resilience and enhances energy security, ensuring development on Country is community-led and culturally grounded.
• Has led to policy reforms that promote First Nations equity and ownership in renewable energy projects—supporting systemic change in how Aboriginal rights are recognised in climate and energy policy.
• Empowers Aboriginal communities through tailored workshops, practical tools, and assessment methodologies that support informed, culturally grounded, and economically beneficial decision-making about energy development on Country. By enabling meaningful participation in the energy transition, particularly given that approximately 50% of renewable energy projects are proposed to be based on Aboriginal land, this work contributes to a fairer, more equitable transition and helps ensure its success.

Leadership and Engagement

• Informed national policies including the First Nations Clean Energy Strategy and NSW Government renewable energy guidelines—embedding First Nations equity as a core project assessment criterion.
• Delivered knowledge exchange workshops with LALCs across regional NSW, with ILJ teams including Indigenous students, engineers, and legal and energy experts working directly with communities.
• Championed rights-based approaches to climate and energy at global forums, such as the 2025 Right Here Right Now Global Climate Summit co-convened by the University of Oxford and UN Human Rights.

Significance to the Sector

• Offers a scalable, interdisciplinary model for university–community–government collaboration that embeds cultural safety and First Nations self-determination into sustainability transitions.
• Produced replicable tools and resources—such as a renewable energy land assessment methodology—shared via reports, fact sheets, accessible mapping platform, and webinars for use by other Aboriginal communities and researchers.
• Demonstrates how research institutions can align societal impact with Indigenous justice, advancing net-zero goals while deepening inclusion and capacity-building for Aboriginal partners. At the same time, it strengthens universities’ understanding of their role as public institutions, building internal capacity to respond to the social justice and cultural dimensions of the energy transition.

Wider Societal Impact

• Exemplifies how universities can walk alongside Aboriginal communities in ways that are grounded in respect, reciprocity and societal impact.
• Helps close the equity gap through Aboriginal-led participation in clean energy, aligning economic, environmental, and social benefits.
• Increases employment pathways for Indigenous students and graduates in renewable energy and policy sectors and helps train non-Indigenous students to be culturally responsive and contribute to the future clean energy workforce.
• Grows capacity for academics and university teams to work in new and different ways and contribute to positive societal impact.
• Promotes systemic change through advocacy, reshaping how governments and developers engage with First Nations in climate and energy transitions.