 My name is Emma Aisbitt and I am a Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. I've really focused on economic globalisation on trade and investment and its governance and how getting the rules right on that can really be the starting point to trying to make it a fairer but also a more environmentally sustainable world. I was always pretty good at maths and interested in using my skills to help the world, particularly for environmental purposes and originally my undergraduate degree was at UNSW in chemical engineering because I thought it was a good way of combining my skills and my interests but then I really did want to get the environmental aspect so I was privileged enough to get to take a Master's of Environmental Change and Management in Oxford and then I thought okay I'm all set up to be an environmental engineer and I did enjoy that and I worked for the EPA in New South Wales but after a while I started feeling frustrated that environmental engineers seem to be trying to fix up the problems at the end of the pipe whereas the source of the problems seem to be more structural in the global economy so that's why I went off to Berkeley to study economics and then I spent five and a half years at the University of Humboldt and came back to the ANU start of 2018 and I've been here since. The Grand Challenge Scheme is really about using the National Institutes grant that ANU has to take on grand challenges for the world and to really have an impact so this is about doing research on things that really matter but research that has an impact in the real world so the ANU puts its money where its mouth is on this and each of the grand challenges gets $10 million over five years and we've used a large part of our $10 million to hire an incredible team of early career researchers with a great mix of disciplines and genders to work together in a truly transdisciplinary way to try and help Australia shift from a very carbon intensive export profile to embedding renewable energy and helping the world as well as helping secure Australia's economic future. In particular, part of my appointment is as the Associate Director of Search for the ANU Grand Challenge, Zero Carbon Energy for the Asia Pacific and that is really relevant because that grand challenge is really about envisioning a new future for Australia which is led by a combination of our natural resources and the incredible renewable energy resources we have in Australia as well as our human resources which is really where the ANU and other universities can come in so Australia has traditionally exported a lot of raw materials as we know mining and gas. Upwards of 90% of these sort of embedded carbon emissions or greenhouse emissions from Australia's current export profile actually occur in the Asia Pacific so yes we have perhaps helped the Asia Pacific develop over recent decades but we've done that in a very carbon intensive way that is harmful for the whole world including the Asia Pacific and Australia and so really what we're looking at is how can we start still supporting growth in the region but doing it in a way that is not coming at the cost of all of our health and well-being. And this is really an opportunity to take our renewable resources and take our human capital and sort of move up the value chain and start embedding our renewable energy in clean products both to future proof Australia's export but also to make more use of the human capital that we have in Australia and really value it. Firstly I was very flattered to be asked to be a part of the GOA initiative and I think hats off to the ANU and to the initiative that really made sure that they got a mixture of people of different career stages and different genders and different disciplines although there was an emphasis for obvious reasons on people with an economics and policy background so I kind of fitted that in but also I think they wanted people who do think about the real world and how it interacts with academia so one of the things that was exciting about the GOA initiative was that we got we got to put forward ideas you know sort of share these ideas about how Australia can contribute so I was contributing I know others from the ANU were contributing to one of the scenario ideas where we have sort of this this research-led recovery which involves research around our energy transition and how that can really bring value both to Australia and to the region. I enjoy that I get to work on the things that I really care about and that intellectual freedom is just such an incredible privilege that we have and so to put my work time into following my passions and feeling like you might be actually doing good in the world is is just a real gift so I was really pleased to be able to use my expertise to make a contribution to the group of eight COVID-19 research reform task force. Climate change is real I mean there's no scientific doubt about that issue and it is having real consequences already of course storms have always happened but they're going to happen more often and they're going to happen with an underlying higher sea level rise we've had the terrible droughts that just keep happening and of course the bushfires that were completely unprecedented that's just Australia we're seeing consequences all around the world and I think the other reason perhaps that the ANU thought that this particular project was good to support is that actually we're at this tipping point we actually we can do it for so many years there was this oh but it's going to be so expensive and but we're at the point where renewable energy is actually cheaper than new-built coal-fired electricity so we really can do this all we need to do is overcome a vested interest but be this is a new way of doing a whole lot of things and this is why research and particularly sort of impact and engagement focused research it might really be able to tip us quick enough to actually smooth the curve in time so to speak to be honest the this grand challenge on zero carbon energy for the Asia Pacific has been really important part of my personal journey so I must admit I mean anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade perhaps would have reason to be concerned and certainly there was an element of feeling like we're going to hell in a hand basket to be honest and I think being part of this grand challenge and working with the engineers who've made this stuff happen who have made this reality and then thanks to it large but I must say to China making solar panels for example cheap enough I see that it really is possible and so I don't know if I have hope but why not keep trying anyway right I think if you look around the world you can see how badly things can go wrong if science is given a back seat in responding to crisis particularly the COVID crisis Australia has done a relatively good job thus far in terms of handling the immediate COVID health impacts with a strong emphasis on the science but we really need to make sure this is a major unprecedented economic catastrophe as well and if we are going to make sure that our society doesn't fall apart that we don't see structural poverty just becoming part of the Australian economic landscape if we want to take this opportunity to actually achieve sustainable development then we really will need all the best minds working together on this stuff and we will need research informed policy