Our Mission
NIERI exists to support Indigenous-led energy decisions where reliable power matters most.
We focus on governance, coordination, and practical planning in real-world conditions, helping ensure power systems can support communications, safety, essential services, and long-term community well-being.
Goal One:
Centre Indigenous decision-making
Support processes where Indigenous governments and communities define energy priorities on their own terms. NIERI helps create the structure and clarity needed for informed decisions that reflect local governance, context, and long-term community interests.
Why this goal exists
Because decision-making should come before technology selection, funding mechanisms, or project design.
Goal Two:
Reliability is the baseline
Energy planning must start with the services it supports. Keeping the lights on in clinics. Keeping water pumps running. Making sure the phones work.
Reliability is core infrastructure that has to perform in the wind and the cold, no matter what technology is being used.
Why this goal exists
A power failure is never just an energy issue. It is a clinic closing, a water system failing, or a business losing its livelihood.
Goal Three:
End the silos that create risk
NIERI brings communities, governments, and funders together early, so everyone is looking at the same picture.
Too often, decisions are scattered. Funding is discussed in one office. Technical advice comes from another. Community needs are tucked away somewhere else. Over time, this kind of fragmentation leads to expensive mistakes and hidden long-term costs.
By aligning these pieces at the start, NIERI helps reduce the risk of building systems that are too expensive to fix, hard to maintain, or out of sync with the people they serve.
Why this goal exists
When no one is talking to each other, the community pays the price in the long run.
Reliable power isn't a theory. It is what keeps the lights on in a crisis and allows a community to grow without the constant fear of a blackout.
NIERI provides the technical and practical support to help communities make those systems work.