Shedding light on the Electrification Partnership
In November 2018, Papua New Guinea and four major development partners — Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States — announced the Papua New Guinea Electrification Partnership, or PEP.
You may recall the announcement. It was made amid much fanfare at the APEC summit in Port Moresby.
The objective could hardly have been clearer.
At the time, only about 13 per cent of Papua New Guineans had reliable access to electricity.
PEP would support PNG’s goal of lifting that to 70 per cent by 2030.
Five countries. One partnership.
One measurable target.
It was ambitious.
It still is.
The Early Years
PEP attracted considerable attention following its launch.
Programs were developed. Projects identified. Studies commissioned.
Governments, agencies, utilities and development partners became involved.
For several years, PEP also had a visible physical presence in Port Moresby through the USAID-PEP Activity, a five-year program implemented by a consortium led by RTI International.
In 2021, an academic study examining PEP noted that relatively little was publicly known about how the Partnership itself worked — its governance structure, operating arrangements or the respective responsibilities of its members.
Then the trail becomes harder to follow.
The USAID-PEP Activity ran from 2020 to 2025 and has now concluded.
The broader electrification effort continues.
But the Partnership itself is much harder to find.
What Happened?
PEP didn’t disappear.
Australia continued investing in electricity infrastructure. Japan worked with PNG Power. New Zealand supported electrification projects. The United States pursued its own programs. PNG continued its National Electrification Roll-Out Program.
Projects were being delivered.
But there appears to be no central PEP website. No readily accessible consolidated annual PEP report. No public dashboard showing progress towards the original 70 per cent target.
Instead, what we find today looks more like a jigsaw puzzle.
The Jigsaw
Australia has a piece.
Japan has a piece.
New Zealand has a piece.
The United States has a piece.
The PNG Government has several pieces.
Then there is PNG Power, the National Energy Authority, development banks and the private sector.
And the nature of electrification itself appears to be changing.
Australia’s Pawarim Komuniti program, for example, has supported thousands of solar installations in communities unlikely to see a PNG Power line anytime soon.
Elsewhere there are grid extensions, mini-grids, renewable generation and transmission projects.
That is significant because the eventual solution to PNG electrification increasingly looks less like:
extend PNG Power’s grid everywhere
and more like:
grid + mini-grid + solar home systems + micro-hydro + private generation.
Which, frankly, makes much more geographical sense for PNG.
Perhaps PEP hasn’t simply faded.
Perhaps it has evolved.
13 Per Cent — Or 43 Per Cent?
There is another complication.
The World Bank’s current PNG data reports electricity access at 43.3 per cent in 2024.
Yet contemporary PEP documentation continues to refer to only around 13 per cent having access to on-grid electricity.
Those figures are not necessarily contradictory.
They are measuring different things.
The lower figure now being cited in some PEP-related material refers specifically to on-grid access, while the World Bank’s broader measure includes electricity access beyond the formal grid.
And that difference is extremely important.
If the World Bank’s 43.3 per cent figure is measuring the broader reach of grid and off-grid electricity access, it suggests substantial progress.
But it is not directly comparable with the roughly 13 per cent figure now cited for on-grid access.
Nor does it mean 43 per cent of Papua New Guineans suddenly have dependable PNG Power electricity.
Reliability, capacity and affordability are another question entirely.
It also makes comparing today’s numbers with the original 2018 baseline surprisingly difficult.
How Are We Going?
There is clearly plenty happening.
In 2024, the United States and PNG reported that ongoing implementation of PEP had improved access to power for more than 255,000 households.
Japan continued to describe its work with PNG Power as contributing to PEP.
Australia continues to describe electricity investments as commitments under the Partnership.
As recently as December 2025, Australian Government material was still describing PEP as a strategic collaboration between PNG, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Japan.
And PNG continues to pursue the 70 per cent by 2030 objective.
The pieces of the jigsaw are there.
What is difficult to find is the picture on the box.
For a partnership announced with the very measurable objective of moving PNG from roughly 13 per cent to 70 per cent electrification by 2030, the absence of a central public dashboard — or even a consolidated PEP website — makes it remarkably difficult to answer the simplest question:
How are we going?
We can find Australian numbers. Japanese projects. New Zealand projects. US figures. PNG Government figures. Off-grid installations. Grid connections.
But there doesn’t appear to be one authoritative PEP source that reconciles them and reports progress against the original target.
Perhaps a single multilateral partnership has gradually become an umbrella for separate programs and projects.
Perhaps responsibilities have shifted.
Perhaps the original model changed as everyone learned what electrifying a country as geographically difficult as Papua New Guinea actually requires.
None of that necessarily represents failure.
It may simply represent progress taking a different path.
But with four years remaining until 2030, that one nagging question remains:
How are we going?
If somebody is keeping the score, we’d genuinely love to see the scoreboard.
🌺
Words by Kora. Direction and Editing by Glenn Armstrong
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