## 4 Discussion  
Our study shows that responses to extreme weather events differ among the international case studies. The adoption of DES (typically in microgrid configurations) appears to be more suitable as a response to assist remote communities in accelerating the economic recovery from, and the mitigation of, climate extremes. None of the international examples are designed with an Emergency DES in mind, with one exception: California. Therefore, the Californian case studies are most suitable for comparison as Sonoma County faces similar challenges to the Latrobe Valley/East Gippsland region--both seek reduced dependence on the centralised grid and 'off gridding' during the wildfire season while maintaining essential services and operations. Technologies which have been integrated into the DES largely involved solar PV arrays/solar parks, small wind turbines and in bespoke cases hydrogen fuel cells. All microgrids were backed up by battery storage, but the battery's chemical composition varied. In addition, a control system allowed the islanding of microgrids and the independent operation of electricity powered systems in times of crisis. The control system can also assist to optimise the DES economic efficiency, e.g., batteries are charged during off-peak times and deliver electricity during peak times. The size of DES discussed here, did not exceed 1 MW, all systems were bespoke served different purposes as they included businesses, university campuses and/or remote communities. DES also support e-mobility and encouraged the installation of EV charging stations (Greece, California). Our findings reveal that DES uptake is driven by environmental concerns. Climate change is a major driver behind microgrid adoption (California, Greece) as well as the uptake of low-emission technology solutions such as EV charging infrastructure (California, Greece, New Zealand), while in developing nations (India) electrification and energy security drives decisions for the types of energy infrastructure. As Australia is highly vulnerable to the compound risks of global climate change (droughts, wildfires, strong winds, ocean-atmosphere coupled climate phenomena), addressing environmental concerns are synthesised into incentives to address climate-related infrastructural damages. We found that DES adoption is strongly driven by economic incentives, microgrid adoption proves to be more cost-effective over the recovery and/or (re)connection to the conventional electricity infrastructure following extreme weather events. The financial losses for communities, and in particular the costs faced by utilities, due to temporarily power interruptions/outages and permanent damages to energy infrastructure (high costs of recovery) caused by extreme weather events, exceed the costs of installing new distributed energy systems, which show higher climate resilience (California, Greece, Australia). In remote India, the connection to the centralised grid is more costly than the cost of installing a microgrid. DES also meet community needs (rural India, Greece, rural Australia/islands). The development of suitable business models in collaboration with the community allows increased flexibility in meeting individual household electricity demands, adjusting to household incomes (India) and improving the overall economic position of residents (Greece). The examples also confirm that the adoption of Emergency DES is supported by a multi-stakeholder approach related to the governance and financing of microgrids. Desktop research and research calls with relevant stakeholders have also shown that the scale of the disaster matters. In the case of the Christchurch earthquake, the access to electricity required immediate solutions, and resulted in the use of diesel generators and the modernisation of the conventional electricity infrastructure (underground cables, rewiring, etc. ), thus a microgrid was not considered. The institutional environment (funding, regulatory aspects) determines the governance of energy solutions in response to extreme events.