My friend Charlie Charters has meticulously catalogued the sudden proliferation of waste-to-energy companies across our social media feeds and newspapers in Fiji. His observation on the TNG project has become a hot-button issue, but the forces driving it—our deepening energy crisis and our chronic failure to manage waste—are not going away.
Let us be clear about what his catalogue actually demonstrates. When three separate foreign entities materialise; each offering capital-intensive technological solutions to a problem Fiji has ignored for decades, that is not merely evidence of opportunism. It is evidence of a vacuum. It is evidence that our inability to govern basic municipal functions—waste collection, landfill management, environmental protection—has become so glaring that it now invites outside intervention. The alternative is not a clean, controversy-free, locally funded solution. The alternative is what we have right now: creeks and drains choked with plastic, dumps on fire, and a national grid teetering and being put under pressure like never before.
The Energy Crisis Is Here, Not Coming
The never-ending war in the Persian Gulf continues with no end in sight. Even if it miraculously ended tomorrow, our energy crisis would persist into next year and beyond, because the underlying problem is structural, not episodic. We rely on imported fossil fuel. We have no clear alternative. And our government’s response—appreciating a modest fuel reprieve from Australia while otherwise projecting a lackadaisical approach—is concerning, to say the least.
I wrote at the start of the current Gulf war that any government with vision should be planning for a worst-case scenario. Where are those plans? Where is the load shedding schedule, the four-day work week strategy, the vehicle reduction measures, the mandatory energy conservation for government entities? The National Security Council should be convening energy executives and major users, not just politicians who view these matters through a lens disconnected from ordinary Fijians. The fact that I see none of this planning suggests a government either unwilling or unable to grasp the severity of what is coming.
What Alternatives Does Fiji Actually Have?
This brings us back to the waste-to-energy question. Beyond hydro, what does Fiji offer? What alternatives exist? Who will help us fund them when we all know that any serious transition will cost millions—if not billions—of dollars we do not have?
The answer is uncomfortable but necessary: any alternative cleaner energy source will invite controversy. That is the nature of the beast. Waste-to-energy draws fierce opposition. Solar farms demand vast land and capital. Wind power struggles with reliability and maintenance. Geothermal remains untested at scale in Fiji. We can and should demand guardrails. But to oppose every available option while refusing to acknowledge the scale and cost of alternatives is to remain blind to an undeniable trajectory: fossil fuel use is trending downwards, and the never-ending Gulf war, is only accelerating the global search for what comes next.
We are not Australia. We are a small Pasifika nation, disproportionately reliant on imported energy, with a fragile economy, a growing population, and a waste crisis that we have proven incapable of solving through conventional means. And right now, we are actively battling over one of the few alternatives being offered, while other separate companies circle in the background sensing opportunity.
A Toxic Mix That Demands Action
On top of our drug epidemic, HIV crisis, and NCD burden, an energy crisis creates a toxic mixture that in my view, now calls for urgent action. I repeat what I have said before: government needs to bite the bullet and declare a state of emergency sooner rather than later. Not as a press release, but as a framework for action—load shedding, reduced working weeks, vehicle restrictions, mandatory conservation, and above all, a serious, transparent, and expedited process for evaluating and implementing alternative energy solutions.
Charlie’s observation about the sudden appearance of alternative companies confirms what many of us already sense: the vacuum is real, the crisis is accelerating, and the private sector—foreign and domestic—is moving faster than our government. Whether any of these specific proposals survive scrutiny is a separate question. But the underlying point remains. We cannot afford to reject every alternative because of controversy, because the alternative to controversy right now is continued reliance on fossil fuel, continued vulnerability to global shocks, higher import costs and inflation, and continued degradation of our environment and our economy.
The guardrails must be strong. But the door must be open. Because closed doors lead only to one place: the dark.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 