 Hello I'm Alina at Kiwi Connect and we're here at New Frontiers 2016. I'm with Simon Miller who's the CEO of Pure Advantage. Simon do you want to just tell us in a nutshell what is Pure Advantage? Okay Pure Advantage is a think tank and we're a voice for a green growth, business green growth where we're founded by Philip Mills and a small group of some of New Zealand's most successful business leaders to with the aim to transform New Zealand's economy to a low carbon economy. Right and so what sort of initiatives are you looking at or what sort of business ventures are you talking about that that could achieve a low carbon economy? Right well it was formed in 2012 really in a response to a political regime that wasn't really doing very much about green growth in New Zealand. We have a very perception that New Zealand is very clean and green but there's big gaps in the in the actuality of that. So Philip and the trustees invested in some robust economic research done with the University of Auckland and Vivid Economics in London to present opportunities that best aligned with New Zealand's future in a strategic way and they there's seven of them. So they are agricultural technology by diversity, by fuels, smart grid, renewable energy, housing and waste of value. Yes so a couple of those that you mentioned there are things that New Zealand is traditionally already quite strong in so agriculture, renewable energy. What I guess opportunities do you see to build upon those strengths? Well there again is the perception that we are really strong and we have been leaders in agriculture but we've focused pretty heavily on profitability instead of productivity that's in the dairy sector per se and but you look at much more broadly than that so you have to go into forestry. We're in net deforestation something like 20 odd thousand hectares a year right now so we're trending downwards and the renewable energy front we've been sitting at 80% renewable energy renewable energy for a couple of decades and we actually slipped down from about 90% when we took on more fossil fuels to provide our transportation. So there's therein lies the rub we've really been we'd like that because it's lowly populated and you know we have this perception you know however these economic opportunities that we can really grasp and take a hold of and that's what we're focused on in terms of a solutions based response. Do you see a lot of opportunities for I guess cross sector ventures perhaps renewable energy into transport or I guess systems that work together in a whole systems approach? Absolutely it's a good question on the renewable energy front of course I mean we could have an electric highway you know in a heartbeat with fast charging stations and the uptake of electric vehicles and and that would drive that area. On the you mentioned I think we talked about ag tech before biodiversity, bioproducts, waste of value all of these areas are driven out of the primary sector forestry, smart farming so you know a lot of cloud-based applications in terms of more efficient farming and value-add products too and we've talked about this for decades in New Zealand and you know yet we keep shipping off logs to you know foreign countries like Asia and they get come back to us and chipboard and and but you know there are companies that are focusing on this now but it's hard but we need to focus on it with more R&D and capital investment. Yeah you mentioned a couple of questions ago that the size of New Zealand is quite small and perhaps a limiting factor so do you see a role for I guess people to be coming into New Zealand and working on on these issues together with New Zealanders? It's a limiting factor if you think it's a limiting factor I mean I think it's it's a limiting factor in terms of the availability of capital here on the ground to scale something clean technology innovation in such a way that it becomes a viable business however if you look at it as from a from a test bed case because we're isolated we can kind of control these environments and and build opportunities that then it's not limiting at all and I think that's what we absolutely should focus on I mean you look at places in the US for example there's large counties but they can turn things around you know and so when you talk about four and a half million people I think it's just possible to do that. Is that building up of New Zealand as an incubation nation place where you can test these products and really make something? Yeah and it has been like that all along but then what we talk about are natural advantages so pure advantage are natural advantages and we have advantages that no one else really has and and that's accentuated or amplified by the tyranny of distance and the fact that there's not many people coming here to exploit them you know yeah we have three and a half million visitors per year but tourism is is basically our biggest GDP contributor you know second to dairy only only in the last year but I mean these are these are huge opportunities if we smart farm focus on our biodiversity forestry you know this this will align and increase the sort of natural capital of New Zealand and the opportunities to invest and test and scale yeah playing to our strengths absolutely absolutely yeah fantastic thank you Simon here at New Frontiers 2016