 Well, welcome everyone to the Australian National University and our Big Picture series. It's part of the 2020 ANU Crawford Leadership Forum. My name is Sean Innes and I lead the Public Policy and Societal Impact Hub at ANU. I am joining you from Canberra, the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Nambri people, and I'd like to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. And I'd like to extend those respects to the elders of the more than 300 nations that call Australia home. Today's event is focused on climate change in a post-pandemic world. In looking at the pandemic and what we've learned from it, there are three features that I think are relevant to today's discussion. The first is that in response to a global threat, nations have acted quickly and decisively or at least most nations. They have put their economies into hibernation and restricted social freedoms that many hold dear. Very stringent reactions from governments in many nations. In doing so, they've accepted a level of short-term pain and change to protect health and longer-term economic prospects. The second feature is that action was not part of a globally coordinated response, but nations acting individually in their best interests, their duty to protect their own citizens rather than some conception of the global interest has driven behaviour. The third is that the direction that the world now takes is heavily dependent on new technology coming to the rescue. For the pandemic, it's in the form of a treatment or a vaccine. For climate change, it's in the form of zero or very low emissions technologies. So what does all this mean for our efforts to tackle climate change globally and here in Australia? To answer that, we've got a wonderful panel, chair by ANU's own Professor Ken Baldwin, director of the Energy Change Institute here at ANU. A final reminder for those watching live, please submit your questions using the Q&A function in your toolbar. And with that, I'd love to hand over to Ken to lead the panel. Bye for now. Thank you very much, Sean, and I would also like to pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land where I join you from today, the Nambri and Ngunnawal people. We'll try and go through as many of your questions on the Q&A tab as we can today. We'll acknowledge you by name and city if you include that in the start of the question. Otherwise, questions will be asked anonymously. So let's now start by joining and walking me with me, our speakers today. We have, first of all, Joe Evans from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. Second, we have Emma Hurd, investor group on climate change. And third, we have Andrew Leveris, former chairman and CEO of the Dow Chemical Company. So welcome to my panel. And just to start things off, let me remind you of the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the planet more broadly. We've all seen the economic downturn, the suffering of humanity and, of course, the effects of this on the wider global emissions. We know from measurements that emissions fell dramatically. On April the 7th, they actually fell by 17% more than any other day in the first four months of 2020. So things by that stage had changed dramatically. And what we are seeing now is that emissions have dropped by well over 10%. And that we have now reached a point where we have the equivalent emissions that were recorded back in 2006. So this has been an enormous change. And of course, this has had other consequences. For example, in some parts of India, people have seen the Himalayas for the first time because of the reduction in pollution and the clarity of the air, for example, which also reflects the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. So this is a dramatic change in the planet. And of course, the question is, what will happen when we come out of the COVID-19 period and move into the recovery phase? And so I'd like to start the discussion today with our panel by asking the question, will the lowering of emissions during the pandemic be wiped out by the following rebound? And I'd like to ask Jo Evans if she'd like to give her perspective on that question. Thanks, Ken. And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be on the panel with Emma and Andrew, it's a great privilege and an important topic. Look, to answer the question, will the reductions be wiped out? You have to actually think about what's happening in the atmosphere with our emissions. So any reduction in emissions over a period of time, just like what we've seen over the last couple of months, are going to make a contribution to having a lower stock of emissions in the atmosphere going forward. The only thing that could wipe that gain out would be if emissions not only came back up to where they were trending before COVID-19 started, but actually went beyond that and increased above where we had ever expected them to be before. That would be the only way this gain that we have seen, this fortuitous gain of an otherwise horrible experience, would be wiped out. But we are looking at what's happening in Australia and you definitely see the kinds of trends that Ken was describing at a global level you're also seeing here. So we've looked at, for example, in the electricity sector, if you look at April and May of this year compared to 2019, there was a 1.4 million tonne reduction in the amount of emissions coming from our electricity sector, which is about a 5% drop in the transport sector. That drop was more like 27%. So we've seen nearly 6 million tonnes come out of the transport sector just in those couple of months. But you've got to think about what's happening in those sectors. Our electricity sector was already on a trend downwards, so it's very unlikely that the emissions are going to rebound anywhere back up to something higher than what they were before. For transport, on the other hand, that's an area of our emissions that has always been growing, hasn't started any sort of a trend downwards yet. So you would expect that the emissions will come all the way back up to where we expected them to be before. But again, probably not go higher than that again. So you do see emissions come back up to trends. And we saw that after the global financial crisis as well back in 2008-9. And you see reports back about very rapid, in fact, record growth in emissions coming out of some of those periods. And we will probably see rapid growth in emissions again coming out of this one. But that doesn't mean that they are wiping out the gains. It just means they're kind of returning back to normal. And I think really the question that we're trying to get at here is, you know, has it been a good thing that emissions dropped? And can we capture that gain and take it forward with us? And we've just got to be a little bit careful about that one because as the IEA has said in their report that just came out this morning and many others are commenting on, the gains or the emissions reductions that we've seen are really mostly about economic activity. They're not really coming from the sort of structural changes that we want to see to get really systemic shifts in our emissions trajectory. And, you know, we've all sort of experienced either personally, directly or through our friends and family, we're just watching what's happening in the economy, the really substantial costs that have been associated with having this level of emissions. And so you sort of say, is this the most effective way of us reducing our emissions? And then you'd have to say, no, we want that economic activity to recover. And we want to find the more effective ways of reducing our systemic emissions over time. So will the gains be wiped out? No. Do we have some opportunities to look for new ways of introducing low emissions, technologies and so on as we go forward? Absolutely. As we think about recovery. I think we'll give it at that, Ken. Great. Thank you very much, Joe. Would anybody else in the panel like to say something about the possibility of a rebound? Ken, if it's all right, I might just add one thing that I didn't say, and I should have, I mentioned electricity and transport, but there's actually been quite a number of other sectors in the economy where we're not seeing, at least in Australia, not seeing any substantial shift in those emissions. So if you think about the agriculture sector, because most of that shift downwards in the others come from economic activity, you wouldn't have expected to see much change in agriculture. And that's what we're seeing. So for some sectors, that sort of rebound effect won't even happen in travelling through. Cheers. Indeed. And in fact, agriculture is rebounding from the drought, so you wouldn't necessarily expect to see a decrease anyway. So yeah, that's certainly true. Now, I guess, you know, given that things have changed dramatically around the world and it's really captured the globe's attention in terms of addressing a significant threat to the human race, is this COVID-19 crisis perhaps an opportunity to refocus our attention on another grave global threat to the human race? And that is climate change. And indeed, as Joe has hinted, as we come out of this recession and we reconfigure the way that economies work, is there an opportunity to do that reconfiguring in a way that helps us to address climate change? So maybe I could ask Andrew Leveris if he'd like to comment on that question. Yeah, thank you, Ken. So I would say to you that that question has been in the making now for a couple of decades. And when in my prior life as heading a large global enterprise, if I looked at the three tectonic shifts that were going on that affected all of humanity and integrating them into the value system of any enterprise, including the one I used to run, globalization, digitalization, and the effects humanity was having on the planet. And as a consequence of that, what could one do to minimize the footprint of all of us at seven billion people on the planet? Stressing the planet, the third trend, or sustainability, as the United Nations unleashed its SDG goals and put them out there, if you think about the consequences of managing the science behind the indicators of stressing the planet, of course, the effect on the environment and the effect on the atmosphere and the effect climate change has been putting on the planet scientifically is something that's been debated endlessly by institutions. And unless we do something about them like the Paris Accords, nothing will tend to get done. That it's a long runway item. The pandemic has brought a short runway item right to our doorstep, literally. The pandemic also science-based, also predicted, also part of every enterprise's enterprise resource management program, everyone knew about it. The science was there, yet very little was done. Even with the warning signals of SARS and MERS and H5N1 and the AVEN influenza, humanity did nothing really about it. So why is that true? And what can we do now that we've seen the COVID-19 pandemic unleash itself on us on humanity? What is this saying? Literally, it's the planet talking to us. And is humanity having now to respond to these three tectonic trends coming all at once or together in a different way? And I would say the thesis of the case and the proof of the case have just collided. This crisis is now giving us an opportunity to do what we have really been very low to do, which is to rethink and redo our global institutions. Globalization is actually per the 1950s and the Marshall Land failing. Western democracies no longer wanting to lead. Western democracies don't even get together and coordinate anymore. And of course, what we've seen in the United States is the poster child of that, but not just that. And I would say to you that what's happening as a result of globalization failing to keep the global institutions relevant, and we've seen examples of that just now with WHO, it really does bring to the fore that what is humanity going to do to respond to the climate change issue that it can learn from not being able to respond to the pandemic. And I would say to you that the answer is starting to actually unfold before us. Humanity is responding in a very interesting way. It's responding nationally. And in some cases, if you take a look at the way Australia is responding to the crisis, even responding at the local and state level, economic nationalism and society and citizens coming together to put in place safeguards for their citizens, even though we don't like the ramification of division around the world with failure of global institutions, the remaking of global institutions is going to come by summing the best practices around the world to responses like the responses to COVID and figuring our way on how to make our societies, our citizens safer and better as a result. So responsible nations like Australia have to step up. What we are basically doing in this country is saying, I am looking after my citizens. I have to take care of my economy. I have to have the term just transition to minimize the effect of my activities on my country and as a consequence my planet. And then when institutions get rebuilt around the world, as we look at G20, as we look at G7, as we look at G11, whatever G you want to say, I would say the G0 we are all suffering from right now, the lack of global leadership, means let's take care of what we need to do as a standard setter and a standard bearer to enable a just transition and therefore put in place fiscal policies of the long-term kind that governments have been loath to do because governments come and go and short termism has taken over everything. How can we put in place fiscal policies to stand the test of time? And as far as I am concerned, that means government and private sector have to work like never before to develop answers to the marriage of minimizing the effect of my citizens, helping my country be the standard bearer. As a consequence of that, I think we need the role of government as our government is doing to actually start to embrace all of the opinions and inputs of all of our sectors of society and put in place reforms for the national good, for the sovereign good. Which what does that mean? A sustainable energy policy. A sustainable industrial policy. A sustainable digital policy. A sustainable policy that actually lifts our quality of life, not degrades it for all of our citizens. I think that type of bigger government as much as it's been a need for the private sector for so long, the rule book of the 21st century means it's required. We cannot use the rule book of the 20th century to solve these problems. And for me, that means that climate change now comes to the fore as a result of this pandemic, not to the back. And by the way, the earlier question that you asked, Joe, and I would say to you, I'd agree, economic creativity will rebound. And if we don't step in and set the new rule book in place, we will see the same emissions we had pre-COVID. And I don't know when, two or three or four years, that means no learning. We need to be now and grab the learning and then make the just transition accelerate, not decelerate. Thank you, Andrew. And that raises a very interesting question, which is that in the face of crisis, people around the world have turned to government for help and for guidance. And this perhaps has brought about a new form of social contract, at least in some countries. In other countries, things start to be a little ragged around the edges. But in many countries, I think what we're finding is a new form of social contract where the non-government sector and the government sector are working much more closely together as you indicate they need to. And as you say, there is a prospect for carrying that forward and dealing with other serious issues like climate change. Very interesting perspective on the shift in social contract that we're seeing. So maybe now we should turn our attention from the global societal issues to Australia and look at how the climate change discussion, particularly around policy and social contract might change in Australia following the post-COVID-19 world. And Joe, again, maybe you could perhaps give us a perspective on that. Yeah. I'll just kick us off. Because I guess I want to still go back to this idea that what we've seen in terms of that big emissions reduction now has really been about economic activity and what we really need to achieve to get sustained emissions reductions are the more systemic changes to the way that we produce energy, to the way that we behave as individuals, how much we're driving our cars. All those things are still very difficult. And the reason I just put that in context is because there's quite a lot of things in terms of the way that we will talk about climate change in Australia that are going to stay the same after COVID, as well as there being obviously some new opportunities to promote a discussion about, well, what are the industries that we are trying to support as we recover? And how do we position ourselves so that those industries got the best chance of being the sort of low emissions, things of the future, like hydrogen and so on? So if I come back to, so what are the things that are still the same? I mean, the Australian government, and I kind of note Andrew's point about global institutions, but we are dealing with a big, you know, a wicked, wicked issue in climate change. And I think the global agreement that's there under Paris is incredibly important to enabling countries to take the actions that they need to take. Because unlike, sorry, we'll come back to the question again, unlike COVID where you can take a very nationalistic approach because if you close your own boundaries and you can, the actions that you take as a nation can very directly affect your risk, that's not the case in climate change. So for Australia, it wouldn't matter if we completely shut off our emissions tomorrow, the kinds of impacts that we would feel as a result of climate change will probably still be exactly the same. So there isn't that kind of very quick cause and effect kind of relationship that you have seen in the COVID crisis. So we're still in a world of needing definitely to have a global, united coalition of action that actually gets to the long-term goals that we're after. And that hasn't changed. It was there before COVID, it's there now. We still need to get global emissions down to the kind of levels that will enable us to stay well under two degrees and make as best efforts as we can to keep temperature rises to less than 1.5. That's unchanged. The Australian government's commitment to that is unchanged. And the kinds of things that the government already has in place. So if you think about the work that's being done on the technology road map, the support that's being given to purchasing emissions, reductions from the community and from business through the emissions reduction fund and the limitations that are put on excessive emissions growth through the safeguard mechanism. All of these things are already in place to try to create the systemic changes that we need over time in Australia to bring emissions down but still maintain a really vibrant, prosperous economy and regions and jobs and all of the other things that are important to us as a society. So in some ways that hasn't, again, I was sort of saying lots of things aren't going to change. The bones of what we're going to do on climate policy are already in place. I think what we've got post COVID is a real opportunity to use those existing structures to find the opportunities to see some gains on emissions reductions that we might not have had the opportunity to do before. Not because in the crisis an industry closed down and we don't want to start it up again. I don't think that's the kind of outcome we're looking for. What we're saying is if you're going to be investing in new things and supporting new things to grow, let's have a look at where the opportunities are for things that not only stimulate the economy and provide jobs and regional benefits and so on and productivity growth but where are the things that can also contribute to lower emissions. So I'm pretty optimistic that, you know, the government has already said it wants to take a technology-based approach. It doesn't want to be compelling or forcing or regulating things to happen. I'm interested in creating the opportunity for voluntary action by companies and by individuals to try to keep our emissions on a downward trajectory. And I'm pretty confident that that's still the way that things will unfold. And maybe just as a last comment on that is you do see quite a lot of movement. A lot of industry is already taking a lot of active, you know, I put the climate active banner behind me. Intentionally there's a lot of companies that are already seeing that this is the long-term future. So you've already got trends all pointing in the right direction and I think all we need to do is make sure that our recovery programs don't get in the way of those trends because it is really important that we continue to move emissions down at a rate and a pace that our economy can properly adjust to and that we can continue to have good, safe, reliable energy as well as we do that. Great. Well, thank you very much, Joe. Okay, well, let's now think about how this might work coming out of the COVID-19 recession. I'd like to paint two contrasting scenarios in the next two questions. The first is kind of optimistic one that, you know, we could, you know, invest in a different way to spend our way out of the recession. The other in a more pessimistic one that says, well, you know, we've had this terrible economic shock so things aren't going very well in any sector, let alone in sectors that relate to doing something about climate change. So let me ask the first question then and maybe Emma could provide her perspective on this. So the question is if we're going to have an investment-led, let's say, green recovery, a bit like the green deal that's being proposed in some countries and, you know, focus on things like investment in renewables, new export industries, which not only address climate change in one nation but address climate change across the world and Australia's well-placed. We're a global energy powerhouse already. So is there a way of Australia spending its way out of recession that will provide us with the tools, the investment, the infrastructure that we need to pivot to a more sustainable future? Do you think that pathway is an option that we are going to take, Emma? Thanks, Ken. And just before I get into the question, also just wanted to take a quick moment to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land from which I'm joining you today, the ANU, the Gadigal people of the Oranation and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. And in answering that question, I'm also going to try and just pick up on a couple of the other themes that have been mentioned so far because I had to resist the temptation to dive in and get involved in some of those conversations because it's been a really rich conversation so far in terms of so many issues being raised. And I guess I want to think about it in two ways. Firstly, I want to talk about what else has been going on during the recovery that relates to climate change? And then secondly, how this relates to the investment ask as we begin to look at what are the short, medium and long-term investment requirements of recovery from COVID? So what else has been going on in climate change at the same time the last six months that we've all been in lockdown and working from home in addition to the drop in emissions in some of those key industry sectors? Well, we're still seeing the physical effects of climate change itself. It's actually not that long since most of Australia was on fire in terms of the actual bushfires over summer. We do have the Royal Commission working away in terms of looking at the impacts of the physical effects of climate change in Australia, but we also are seeing unprecedented heat conditions in other parts of the world, you know, places like Siberia that have never experienced an Australian summer and are basically kind of dealing with these impacts. So the actual increasing effects and costs of climate change itself continue to be felt even as we're seeing these short-term drop-offs in emissions and these sort of changes in our everyday working lives as well. We also know that carbon risk remains a financial risk no matter what investment decisions we make. While we've been in lockdown in the last few weeks, in particular, the work for greening the financial system, the international collaboration of financial regulators has published their own guidance on obligations for financial supervisors and integrating climate change into their supervisor or duties. That work is also continuing. They're also publishing further guidance on scenario analysis around how regulated financial entities should be managing for climate change on both the physical and the transition side. So that work is continuing. We also know that investor pressure companies has not diminished and expectations of companies has not diminished around climate change during this period. In the last few months we've seen shareholder resolutions at companies such as Woodside and Santos about 40 and 50% on climate related issues. We've never seen votes that high and it happened during COVID during the lockdown when some would argue that we should have seen a divergence away from focus on climate change issues. We've also seen companies publishing their own commitments to net zero. That hasn't gone away. And even in terms of integrating how this will work alongside the drop-off in demand in some of our key commodities, recent comments from BP around changes in terms of the valuation of their reserves and some of their assets, responding to these kind of structural changes that are happening concurrently in terms of COVID impacts, supply and demand dynamics and climate change decarbonisation trends. All of these things are happening at the same time and investors don't have the choice of choosing whether they respond to climate change or they look at investment requirements around economic recovery post COVID. You actually have to be integrating climate change into every and all investment decisions that you make no matter the context because of the fact that we know, as Andrew correctly pointed out, decarbonisation is one of the challenges of the 21st century. It will fundamentally change every industry sector and investors are very alive to the fact that you have to be managing for climate change in all of your investment decisions. The way I think about it is is it a choice between a green recovery or something else? What is that something else doesn't even exist? Are we having a false debate? Are we actually talking about any kind of economic recovery has to have carbon trends that we're seeing? And is it a little bit of misdirection to say that we should be forced to choose when in actual fact we have no choice, we have to be integrating climate change factors into all of our investment decisions? I guess just in terms of a couple of other points I would make in terms of what does that look like, there's no shortage of debate and discussion happening in Australia or internationally, but what does that look like in particular for very carbon intensive economies like Australia that are also trade exposed, exporting nations into global markets as well? So how do we integrate these sorts of considerations into our discussions and debates that we need to be having quickly but robustly and comprehensively and inclusively around what kind of recovery do we actually want to have based on what kind of economy do we have and where do we know we need to get back to that? I think that's a really interesting signal that's been sent by the energy agency, also kind of identifying a lot of opportunities. A lot of clear priorities in terms of where some of that investment should be flowing if we want to both look at investing in long-term recovery for our economy, also short-term job creation to deal with the social implications of COVID pandemic shutdown and also be managing for these macro structural issues to do with climate change that we have no choice that we have to be dealing with. Great, thank you very much, Emma. So now let's look at the question. Okay, if I just make one comment on that topic as well, because I think in some ways I will agree with what Emma said and what I wanted to try to get at is that so many of the things that we put into the portfolio of things that we will do to help our recovery will lead to better emissions outcomes. The way that technology has improved over the last decade or more, the things that are actually just natural economic choices anyway to drive this stuff and because of the way we start to think about it, the fact that climate risk is being embedded so much more broadly in the way that governments and companies are thinking, I think there is a natural drift towards including the things that you want to see in a recovery program to be there anyway and we are already seeing it even here in Australia, so things like the focus in the home builder program, the fact that you are looking at getting people to renovate older homes to make them hopefully more energy efficient as they do it, the fact that you have got investments in things like the Marinus link which can bring renewable energy from Tasmania up to the mainland, these things are already appearing in our recovery program and it's because they are good things to do for recovery and they happen to actually also lead to some great outcomes so it's almost like there is a natural coalition of these things that is ready to be taken advantage of. Just to respond to that, I agree but the problem is we have a COVID recovery discussion over here, we have a technology roadmap discussion over here and in between we have got the market and capital markets saying actually we want to be going here in terms of how these trends are going to work. We have got to get that speed in the pace that we need to get, you also need a floor in terms of the things that we won't do which are not aligned with those priorities so bringing together those discussions is incredibly important and not having parallel tracks where we hope that they come together because that's what the market wants rather than deliberately deciding as a nation that is where we are going to go and that is where we are going to get to within particular timeframes as well. But maybe the sort of counterpoint to this discussion and that is that maybe what we will see is that because of the economic shock that has happened during the COVID crisis that many companies and indeed governments might look at this and say this is all well and good but the main game here is to get people back to work, to get the economy going again and the climate side of things is a great thing to do but it's all a problem now that the moment we've got to focus on actually surviving in terms of an economy and a society so is there a risk that the COVID crisis will be such a shock to not only Australia but other nations that this will stall much needed investment in decarbonisation. Yeah the natural build on the previous point I tried hard not to chime in because I was anticipating this other side of the conversation before and Emma was summarising quite nicely and the way I'll do it is the visual of the golden triangle. The triangle has split apart what are the apexes of the triangle business, government and civil society and it's splitting apart on many topics so look at the racial riots and civil justice and social justice reform required in countries like the United States and in fact many countries including Australia. If you look at values based activities around the world and the various groups that are forming we are truly into tribal behaviours so as much as I want the Paris Accords to be the template they won't be economic nationalism has arrived and so how do you bring the capital markets, KPIs and indicators performance indicators with enterprise to suit the new requirements of civil society and what civil society has been saying now for about a generation, certainly in the last 20 years is hey what you've done to economically colonise the planet has a ramification and remember there was a debt conversation that went with this in the 0809 crisis so in other words we're piling on too much debt but now we have actual physical ramifications that have unfolded before us the bushfires in Australia as already articulated was a very visible example of a physical phenomena that we have not seen in a generation the pandemic is another one the cost to GDP and the cost to jobs for governments is way higher than the investment roadmap required to risk mitigate these events occurring in the future and that conversation needs to occur the problem with the conversation is it's not occurring at global institutions effectively WTO is failing WHO is failing so that's my previous point so what we've got to do is create that golden triangle in our countries we've got to actually get the ESG factors as part of shareholder and stakeholder responsibility in all of our public institutions and start insisting on how actually affordable economic and energy transition can occur that actually minimizes the footprint of that enterprise on the planet forward-looking corporations are already doing it my own company Dow that I retired from the CEO two days ago announced carbon neutrality by 2050 and full plastics recycle by 2035 now we could argue 2035 and 2050 is a long way away but they're going to hold themselves to account to their shareholders and by the way shareholders the business round table of America boldly put out a statement I was part of this when I was there that says all stakeholders matter not just the financial owner as the financial owner becomes more responsible and there are a lot of them doing that impact investors but they're still the vast majority minority we still have hedge funds who are bidding the drum for 90 day profit pictures we still have activists who are trying to tear companies apart and not spend money on R&D we still have a financial instrument out there where we have too much monetary policy intervening on the enterprises doing the right thing bold CEOs bold boards are stepping up and putting in bold targets we should as a government so back to the triangle listen to the voice of civil society for the next generation of course we care about the past generations but going forward how do we actually minimize the impact of all of human activity on the planet by not putting in metrics you expect what you inspect is a famous saying so we need these metrics put in and pushed on by the capital markets we need governments to set the frameworks energy transition in this country energy policy and environmental policy are two sides of the same coin they are much more less the same thing so house renovations and energy efficiency we should have the best efficiency standards in the world so we don't burn an unnecessary giga-joule energy at all we should optimize our fossil fuel mix so we transition to the lowest carbon emitter ultimately hydrogen when it's affordable we should take our precious funds in our universities and Syro and invest them in the technologies of today and tomorrow as we build affordable renewables as solar has come down how do we get baseload power down how do we get baseload to be hydro or hydrogen and carbon capture and storage we need these technologies accelerated today and then finally how do we actually put a market signal that everyone's behavior changes accordingly this is the famous carbon pricing mechanism that has obviously not gone well in the past year I would venture to say it's not gone well because we've started backwards we've started with the discussion on carbon pricing and not looked at those other three things I just discussed this is not easy stuff if it was easy stuff it would have been solved already we need to actually a golden triangle approach with the key components of that triangle get together and yes by country and ultimately for the world so that we can actually put all those programs together in one big set of policy frameworks that survive change of government that certainty you are getting investment like no tomorrow even out of this pandemic because it's an infrastructure and a capability build for a lower impact on the planet to avert the disasters we've been going through can I just respond to that Ken as well I just want to pick up on a couple of things that Andrew's also said I guess we have to ask the question whenever I participate in these sorts of climate change discussions no matter what the perspectives that people are coming from we always seem to end up in a position of furious agreement around the trends where we're going, what we need and the question I always find myself thinking if everybody recognises that's where we need to go why are we not moving there at a fast pace in a way that's most economically beneficial to Australia why don't we have a carbon price why do we need a technology investment roadmap with government intervention to pull through investment in technologies why do we not have an environment of investment certainty around climate and energy what are the factors that have contributed to Australia being in a position where I think it's pretty widely acknowledged we have a fairly dysfunctional climate and energy debate at the national policy level and if there's one thing and you know I think yes these issues are incredibly hard it is also very hard to argue the national and the international at the same time in terms of pros and cons it's also really hard to in the moment in an environment where you do have demands for short term returns to argue for investment in long term structural change and investment in new business opportunities yes these things are all hard but isn't that also where government has a key role to play in terms of building the golden triangle as we've been talking about do we outsource leadership in that sense do we wait for markets is it up to private sector to drive forward national policy agendas and I guess where I'm going with this question is also or to lobby against them as the case may be in terms of arguing not just for national interest but also for company interest in any kind of policy shift as well which is something we've seen a lot in Australia obviously I guess for the question I'm going is with COVID COVID has not just disrupted our daily working lives and our economy it's also disrupted some of the hard wired political positioning that we've seen and you know is it unreasonable for us at this point to ask that if we can get that kind of unanimity in terms of policy direction and in the response to COVID why can't we also take this opportunity perhaps of a fracturing a little bit of the hard wired positions at the national federal level to actually also look for some sort of breaking of the ice on climate and energy policy and actually begin to have a much more constructive policy discussion about what Australia needs to get to net zero by 2050 you know why can't we make that our COVID priority as well as also looking at short-term jobs creation in key industries because as Andrew has identified they are intricately related Yes and that's an interesting point to now move to the discussion with our audience so there's a number of questions which are around exactly that issue Emma which is does this provide us with an opportunity now to change the way that we actually do things collectively in Australia and we've talked about this at the very beginning in terms of the new social contract you know the fact that we've got this national cabinet in Australia for example so there's a question here from Janet which says that back in the 90s the hawk government established some round table working groups which developed policy on a sustainable future and the question is is this now another opportunity to get past this sort of partisanship we have at the moment and bring together groups that can contribute to the same sort of development of ideas that address the climate change issue not just in terms of reducing emissions but in terms of also adapting society and perhaps get around this roadblock that you've just referred to Emma yeah I mean I think the challenge that we always have here is that politics is inherently partisan it is a contest of ideas will be contested fine but does that mean that policy always has to be so highly contested and at certain points in Australia's history we have actually very effectively come together to agree a compromise solution forward that is in the national interest I don't think there's anybody arguing that the current state of affairs in terms of the climate and energy policy is best serving Australia's national interests at the moment or as good as it could be and with the greatest of respect to everyone who's been involved in trying to constantly find a compromise way forward at the moment over the last 10 years and every initiative that's been put forward we're still not where we need to be in terms of recognizing where we need to get to in fact we won't even we can't even acknowledge where we need to get to in terms of our agreements under Paris we're still having a debate about the language that you use around whether you can or can't say that we need a net zero target by 2050 when you know that's kind of it's implicit in Paris we've signed up to it's what companies are signing up to it's what investors are signing up to as well so there's still a lot of sort of political gymnastics I guess you could say that happens in the public policy discussion you know COVID the discussion around recovery I mean this has to be an opportunity where we address issues to do with the core emissions intensity of our economy and again the IEA report that we've talked about earlier I mean the top three things that it mentions are construction and property efficiency, energy distribution networks and energy deployment type activities this if you asked 90% of investors in Australia about the things that they would be most ready to put money into right now or need to put money into right now it would be along those lines because we know that the energy sector in Australia both needs modernizing it needs decarbonizing and it needs investment so you would think that there would be a few really clear areas where we could move quite quickly to build consensus and to bring some coherence to our national discussion around what does a sustainable economy look like for Australia for the next you know two, three five, ten, fifteen, twenty years Thank you Emma. Anybody else want to contribute? Now I might move on to the next series of questions. There's a number of questions actually relating to the discussion around gas and investment in gas infrastructure in particular discussions around whether gas is a transition fuel etc etc so maybe to sort of group those questions together we could have a question framed around whether gas has a role to play in the recovery process or is this something that is going to cut across the other issues in relation to doing something about climate change just kind of a summary of the various questions that have been asked in that area and happy to take comment on that. If you like I can start. I obviously have been quite involved in that topic for my entire career and I participated in the Obama Council that led to the creation of what ended up becoming an incredibly important part of the US energy mix that in essence was an all of the above energy policy and all of the above energy policy meant that you did four things I talked about the fourth was undone which was the carbon pricing mechanism but the other three were put in place since then I've seen examples around the world where the lowering of emissions and not debilitating industry on the way so a worst case would be I get to a zero emissions but I've lost a million jobs right so we would agree that's not a very good trade unless I can create a million jobs so that's why the word transition becomes very important I've seen that now happen in the UK with their energy transition and it's a sensible one that lowers emissions and actually frankly is now they're now out of coal and they've replaced coal with gas now they wish to go to zero emissions they wish to go to the net zero by 2050 they have those as goals so they're clearly on a pathway to get zero carbon burning in power stations and zero carbon in transportation to get affordable base load power and to get affordable industrial feed stock for inputs because 95% of all synthetics and I've talked about all materials things that go into the devices we're using today are based off carbon and synthetic fuels we live in an organic world may or may not be in anyone's consciousness so you need technology shifts not just in the power sector but in the industrial sector to do that you need R&D and you need to fund that R&D over long life cycles so affordable solar and affordable wind sold part of the problem but they don't solve all the problem you've got to basically find a way to sequester carbon affordably because you're going to be burning it for a while to come and you're going to have it coming out of smoke stacks and sequestration technologies you need affordable hydrogen green hydrogen which is electrolysis base has to have affordable power therefore you've got to synchronize it with an input that actually gives you the output you want to give you the new input that actually economically doesn't work unless you've got breakthrough technology that's on its way and you can see your way to green hydrogen within a decade so how do you manage that transition well you want to lower emissions on the way so why keep burning the high carbon emitter why not use your low carbon emitter and deal with that rather than unless you want to use nuclear by the way which is the other pathway a lot of the work that's being done around the world is in fact on safe nuclear but if you don't want to have a nuclear in your mix then gas is the only thing that can get you from here to there and not lose all these jobs and you've got to be committed to several things R&D to replace it it can't be the destination it has to be the transition so that's very key the second is you've got to find a way to actually replace your industrial use so it's not just for power there are other pathways including hydrogen but they are going to take time you've got to have R&D that supports that so you can get all your synthetics and when I say synthetics I mean building materials I mean things that we use to live things that we our shampoos everything comes out of the carbon molecule so what we've got to find a way to get the whole process to that and I think it's doable and is being done elsewhere Australia has lapsed into this notion of exporting all its gas taking the royalties and using it to fund the economy if that's the way to go fine well how about we use those funds to fund the transition rather than to fund other things if we want zero carbon export all the gas let other people burn it fine but let's use the money that we get from that to invest in R&D pathways to get affordable batteries affordable hydrogen and actually safe technologies that we can use for energy efficiency so that's as much as I can say on the topic in a short time Thanks Andrew anybody else I'll just say a couple of things Ken and it sort of picks up some of the comments Emma was saying earlier too about the difficulties in the debate that we have had for quite a long time now in Australia the difficulty of finding common ground and the debate about what's gas's role in the transition has almost got some aspects of that attached to it in that you get some people who just have a kind of ideological opposition to the use of any kind of fossil fuel and then at the other end of the spectrum you have the view that that's being sort of pushed by the fossil fuel lobby and therefore it's not really a contributed to emissions and what we really need to do is step back and say well what are we using gas for and what's its role in the transition and there are definitely roles for gas in the transition to a low emissions economy we see it already Andrew mentioned the role of Australia in providing gas to countries where the alternative might be a higher emissions source so that's already one in Australia there's a clear pathway where if you can use gas to help stabilise our electricity system you can actually get more renewables into our electricity system as a result so they can work together to get to the low emissions outcomes not like you've got a kind of competition going between the gas and the renewables to get the outcome it's actually saying well what's the portfolio of things that we need to have there so that in the electricity sector it's actually still firm and reliable and doing all the things that we need it to do but also continuing on its trajectory to lower emissions and you know again the sort of delusion I think Andrew made to the fact that it's another it's also pathway to greater use of hydrogen domestically and that would be a part of the potential for Australia to harness its phenomenally great renewable resources concentrate them down into a form of energy that can actually be transported which is hydrogen and use that to supply the world a really low low potentially zero emissions fuel so there is a role for gas and it is sort of it is one of those it's an unfortunate thing in a way that we are still having some problems and having the discussion about exactly how we do that and how we do that to our benefit rather than allowing some of those more ideological positions to get in the way Emma I'll just round that one out just in terms of saying that this debate around gas as a transition fuel has been underway for a while and so has the transition it's not like we're debating starting a transition we're actually well into it right so it's a question of what are we transitioning to and when does that window close when how long is that transition and when is it no longer viable as a transition fuel from either an investment risk perspective or in terms of a climate change perspective this is an issue that institutional investors who I represent a grappling with right now because they are long-term investors so they are looking at putting capital into investment decisions where they're having to work out where are we on that pathway where is the end and what are the different sorts of investments where are the price points where assets are a risk of becoming stranded because of the structural change that we're seeing so this makes them very very nervous and invest a lot of time and energy into due diligence around every single investment decision that they're making so this is not helped by the fact we're still having this sort of debate and then just one other comment because I can see Andrew you want to dive in but I'll just finish my one other comment we're also not really acknowledging the fact that in order to bring in alternative sources of energy that are cleaner we have to take some out of the system and we also have a policy structure at the moment which is deliberately keeping in old inefficient carbon-intensive energy generation in Australia and we're sort of trying to push both sides of the middle at the moment and as a result we're not really going anywhere we can't keep coal in and not make mood for alternative energy sources in Australia at the same time we have to take something out in order to make way for new cleaner investment to come in as well so sometimes I think we've forgotten the fact that more than 50% of our energy mix still comes from coal as well I was just going to I just wanted to dive in just to make sure that the discussion on power gets separated from discussion on industry because it does get somewhat diffuse when one looks at power for industry so that's one thing that's important but gas is used for industry direct and there's no substitute for that and so we need affordable gas there's over 150,000 jobs in Australia directly tied to the use of gas as a feedstock and with gas all exported and priced at international prices those industries are dying so now we're importing 40% of our cement we're importing 90% of our fertilizers our explosives all the things we need for the other industries so the industrial side of this conversation can't get lost in the transition and in fact there is no easy substitute so we've got to remember that coal has no role in that, that's got nothing to do with coal and for that matter it's got nothing to do with oil I mean it's all about natural gas and so one day you'll be able to use hydrogen for that but the sea has to come from somewhere you know being a chemical engineer so where do you get the sea from and so industrial uses of gas actually sequester sea and make it a useful product and remember that's part of the conversation not just electricity absolutely it is and a key part of decarbonising energy supply is the potential to create whole new green industries industries that have not been viable in Australia for a number of years as well I think one of the really exciting things about the technology roadmap is actually let's have a discussion around decarbonised manufacturing as an emerging economic opportunity let's talk about green steel let's talk about bringing back where once we've dealt with the energy issue and the carbon intensity energy issue in whatever form that takes but let's have that real conversation then it actually opens up whole new economic opportunities and job creation opportunities as well that have to be part of the post-COVID economic recovery discussion this is a terrible event that we've been through but are we going to really grasp the opportunity to really think through what do we want for our economy rather than just muddling away from year to year and are we going to set ourselves up for the next 20 years to actually be successful in a decarbonised global economy or are we just going to continue to do it on an incremental basis where we just keep importing every technology every energy back again I think that's a good point to finalise the discussion that we do need to take lessons out of the COVID crisis we are in a position now where we can pivot the way that the economy recovers and move it into new directions these opportunities come around only very rarely once in decades or centuries and if we don't grasp this opportunity now then it will be gone for a very long time so I'd like to now thank all the panel members Joe Evans, Emma Hurd and Andrew Liberus just to remind you that we will be posting this on ANU TV in the coming days and that we have other sessions coming up to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic not only on climate change but on world order and international relations more broadly so thank you for the audience for your participation, thank you for your questions and we look forward to seeing you again at the other sessions but also again next year when hopefully with the COVID-19 crisis out of the way we can come back live again. Thank you all.