 Welcome, everyone. We're starting with Swiss precision here tonight. Welcome, everyone, to the launch of the transitioning to a prosperous, resilient and carbon-free economy, a guide for decision-makers. I think this is the guide that we're knowing that everyone needs to have. I'd like to start tonight by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands and airwaves we're meeting tonight. And I pay my respects to elders past and present. You are on Cambry, the traditional meeting place for literally millennia for this part of the world. And the Nunnawal and Ambrie people have continued to lend it to us to meet on, and so I very much appreciate the spirit that they have provided to our relationship and we try to honour it as best as we can as this university. It is great that we are able to host this in-person event in Cambry here tonight in the heart of our campus. We haven't had many opportunities recently, and it will be interesting to see how Omicron moves and whether or not we'll be able to continue these. I note that some of my colleague universities around the world are finding it actually rather challenging, but I would encourage you to get a booster shot when you're allowed to. I'm getting mine tomorrow. We have a number of distinguished guests, and we also have a lot of guests joining us virtually tonight. We will be shortly joined by the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull, who will officially launch the book. Malcolm has also written the forward. This book has a long gestation period. It was initiated in 2015, which seems like an eon ago, in response to a forecast need for information by decision makers. Over 60 contributing authors, a number of our own ANU researchers and affiliates were involved in the conception, and this includes Professor Ken Baldwin, Professor Mark Howden, Dr. Michael Smith, Professor Karen Hussey, Dr. Fiona Beck, Peter J. Dawson, all of whom will be joining us later this evening for a panel discussion. We are also joined by a number of other contributing authors tonight from all over Australia and internationally, and thank you all for being here and sharing your expertise in the book. I also want to acknowledge the contributions of the late Professor Michael Ropak, who was one of Australia's most distinguished climate scientists. He was involved in the initiation of this book in early 2015, and unfortunately passed away not soon after that. The book's release is very timely. This year we have seen the release of a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning us that unless we take urgent action, the world is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius within a decade. 20 years ago I used to talk about this problem as one of my children and grandchildren. I now realize actually at the age of 54, this is a problem that is going to affect me, and it's going to affect every single person in this room. COP26, the latest round of United Nations climate talks, was of course just held in November in Glasgow, heralding the next chapter of the global response to climate change, highlighting the need to rapid and substantive action. Now, one of the critical measures in addressing urgent action lies in making science-informed decisions at scale in an integrated and collaborative way. The solutions lie in cross collaborations across multiple disciplines, including the sciences, social sciences, and the arts. Here at ANU we are the National University, the Commonwealth University, and in our mission and in our strategic plans we see it as our responsibility to help pave a way for a better future, not just for all Australians, but for the region and indeed the world. With climate change, our responsibilities are definitely global. And I was shown news clipping from 1988 with Will Steffen talking about the dangers in 1988, front page of the camera time. So we've been doing it from the very beginning, and it is a shame it's taken 30 some years to get people's attention, but we will continue to work, not just to sound alarms, but to find solutions. We do have and have always had some of the leading experts in climate change and energy research here at ANU, and many of them here are here tonight. And this year we have established the Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solution, really comprehensive, because those things come together. And that consolidates the former Climate Change Institute, the Energy Change Institute, and the Disaster Science Risk Institute. There have been 500 researchers from across ANU contribute to this, and they work in pretty much every discipline we have, every college we have, every age we have, and they're really working in that multiple dimensions of climate change, energy transition, and disaster solutions. We're really after not just admiring the problem, but actually combating the problem and finding solutions to make our life and our children's and grandchildren's lives prosperous. The breadth and depth of this research is evident in this book, with the ANU authors contributing 18 of the chapters, including those in solar energy, nuclear energy, hydropower, energy storage, hydrogen economy, cities, forests, and agriculture. Back in 2020, following the devastating fires across southeastern Australia, the ANU council passed a resolution committing the university to act and speak strongly in public to help address climate change across the university and more widely. As part of that initiative, we decided we had to actually own our own actions, and we established the ANU Below Zero initiative, which commits ANU to reach below zero emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2025. We know that if we can do it, we're running the largest supercomputer in the southern hemisphere, which means it's also one of the biggest power consumers. If we can do it, then we can show other institutions how to do it, and we are absolutely committed to that, and I really thank Mark Howden for being able to step up and really take that leadership he has shown in the IPCC for so many years and convert it into something here more locally. We are one of the first universities or organizations in Australia to do this, and indeed one of the first in the world. So right now we are working to reduce our direct on-campus emissions by transitioning away from gas and implementing guidelines and measures to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions on travel. Those are our two biggest sources now. So one of the key principles behind ANU Below Zero is the integration of our world leading research and teaching with practical action. We want to actually live what we teach and know. So that's what's so important about this book. By synthesizing knowledge across multiple dimensions of climate change and energy transition, it provides a handbook for action, not just for ourselves, but people around Australia and the world. It has been designed as a guide for decision makers, making the science accessible to a wide variety of audiences, including non-technical readers. I really want to thank everyone. I know how hard it is to put something like this together, especially over such a long period of time and the grounds are changing. But being prepared to get involved in this book and get it off the ground is really a monumental achievement. The urgent action needed now, I'm very glad it's out now and not another year from now. I do have no doubt this guide will serve its purpose in the world, and I think we need to think about how to actively update it over time as the world moves quickly. Tonight we do have a distinguished panel, moderated by Australia's chief scientist, Dr. Kathy Foley. Kathy, thank you for joining us. What I know is a very busy schedule this time of year, but I know this is also a very important thing to you. There will be some time for Q&A following the discussion that she leads on the stage. I do encourage you to ask a question, whether you are joining us in person and virtually. I say, let's make it questions rather than comments. If you want to disguise your comment as a question, do it quickly. And as I said, if you are virtual, then you can use the VVox app. I believe everyone should have received instructions in their event reminder email about how to use that. It's also located in the YouTube live stream description for our online audiences. Before we get to our panel discussion though, I'm really pleased that the Honorable Malcolm Turnbull has agreed to join us and say a few words. Malcolm was, of course, the 29th Prime Minister of Australia and served from 2015 to 2018. Malcolm has always shown a keen interest in climate and energy change issues, regular discussant with my academics in a way that I have to admit I haven't seen any other Prime Minister take advantage of us. And it was great and I made the day return that we have a Prime Minister willing to sit down with our academics and have a conversation. And he recognized the urgent need for large-scale storage to make intermittent renewables reliable and started the construction of Snowy Hydro 2.0 Pumped Hydro Scheme based on conversations here. This will be the largest such scheme in the Southern Hemisphere. And it is very fitting that Malcolm should write our forward for this book. So Malcolm, thank you for making time and coming back to our campus, albeit virtually. And it is, of course, a good way to make sure that we do not exceed Mark Howden's carbon budget by ensuring that you're not flying down here and saving us the energy. But joining us from Sydney, over to you, Malcolm. Thank you once again. Well, thank you very much, Brian, and it is wonderful to be with you all, albeit virtually. And I congratulate all of the authors, over 60 authors that have contributed to this book. Brian's noted that 18 of them are from the ANU. And of course, the book's editors or chief editors were Kent Baldwin, the director of the ANU Energy Change Institute, and Mark Howden, the ANU Climate Change Institute. So I want to congratulate the authors, the editors, and thank you very much for inviting me to write a forward, which I have done, and to launch the book. And thank you too, Brian, for your acknowledgement of country on Ngunnawal land in Canberra, where I used to spend quite a bit of time. But for whatever reason, whether for good or ill, I'm not in Ngunnawal country very often nowadays. Now, I've suggested that this book could be given an alternative title, and that would be no more excuses how we can slash our emissions, save our planet, and pay less for electricity. Now, the reality is that right now, the only obstacle to the energy transition, the transition to clean, cheaper, reliable, zero emission energy, the only obstacle are political ones. Only obstacle, because we have the means to do it. You know, when people, particularly politicians who, unlike me, generally do not spend a lot of time listening to engineers and scientists at the ANU or anywhere else. When politicians say, oh, we've got, you know, we need new technologies, technologies, you know, yet to be developed. They are talking rubbish. We have the tools to do the job today. And, you know, you have in your midst today, I mean, Andrew Blakers is the climate scientist, I probably know the best among you, but you've got so many great climate scientists at the ANU. You have scientists at your university who have played a pivotal role in providing us with the tools to save our planet. I mean, the decline in the cost of photovoltaics alone. It has given us the best chance, one of the best chances we have of achieving that change. Of course, you know, the father of photovoltaics, so he is dubbed by many people, Martin Green at the University of New South Wales has worked with so many of you. You know, really the Australia's contribution to clean energy technology has been extraordinary. We often like to say we bat above our weight. Sometimes that's more of an aspiration. Sometimes that perhaps overestimates the batting and underestimates the weight. But in photovoltaics, in clean energy, there's absolutely no doubt the Australian contribution has been enormous. So, you know, the problem with climate as a political issue is that it calls on today's generations to do something for the benefit of future generations, or at least that's how it used to be seen. And there was an element of both denialism and an element of McCorberism, you know, hoping that something will turn up. And that's very much in the sort of technology, not taxes mantra, which is really all about saying something clever will turn up will make it really easy for us to achieve this goal of zero emissions. What we need to be, what we need to recognize and what this book absolutely does, as, as again, as Brian said, and as I've said myself at the full, this is a handbook. This shows policymakers that we do have the tools to do the job today. But you've actually got to make some decisions and you've got to do things, you know, and you've got to stop kidding yourselves. You've got to stop, for example, being caught by this poisonous political troika that has sobered devil climate policy in Australia for so long. Right wing politics, populist politics, science denying politics, come to that bit more about that in the moment. Right wing media principally that owned by Mr Murdoch. And of course, the vested interest of the fossil fuel level, probably the only rational part of that troika because you can understand if someone owns a gas field or a coal mine they want to keep on exploiting it for their own self interest. You know, that doesn't pay much regard to the future of the planet or anybody else. But the rest of it is honestly mad mad. If I can give you an example, I'll give you an example of craziness that involves one of your scientists will step in has already been noted earlier. Many years ago, when I was the shadow communications minister. So this would have been about 2011 or 2012. Thereabouts. I was spending some time with Morris Newman, a Sydney businessman. Good friend of John Howard's and Tony Abbots, who had been made by Howard, the chairman of the ABC. And Newman was was and remains a climate global warming deny. You know, he says it's a hoax and it's not real and we don't need to do anything about it. And he every now and then he has something in one of the Murdoch papers to making those points. Anyway, I asked him why he was so confident in his view. And he sent me some screeds that he had downloaded off the internet and they were nutty to say the least. And I said to him, look, what about if I ask one of our top climate scientists to just sort of summarize in one page. What the key points are basically an exposition of atmospheric physics, I guess. Anyway, will Stefan was generous enough to do that. Despite I might say will with Willis in the audience, he will recall he had great misgivings as to whether this was the useful useful use of his time, a good use of his time. Anyway, he turned out his misgivings turned out to be right because when I presented it to Newman, he took the paper and he said, yes, of course. And that's it. The ANU, they're part of the same cabal. Them, the United Nations, the CSIRO, the ABC, they're all part of the same conspiracy. And, you know, that's that it sounds crackers, but we are dealing in an age where there is a lot of madness about. I mean, look at the United States, look at the whole Trump phenomenon, look at the reality that you've got two thirds or thereabouts of Republican voters believe that Donald Trump won the last election. Now, there used to be a time and we would say, oh, well, you know, 17 and a quarter percent of, you know, people believe the world is flat or Elvis is still alive. You know, Martians are present and living among us and you'd sort of shrug that off as being mildly amusing. But when you have people disbelieving facts, I mean, facts as simple as who won an election, or what the consequence of additional greenhouse gas concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere when you have that sort of disbelief. When you have people saying, I believe or disbelieve in global warming about a sensible as saying I believe or disbelieve in gravity, you have, you have not eccentric points of view, but positions that have real consequences. Now, we are now, I think, in a position, however, where most people, but not necessarily the most influential people accept the reality of global warming and accept the reality that we must cut our emissions. But there is still, there are still powerful vested interests seeking to slow that down. One of their arguments is to say, well, the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow all the time. Well, thank you for that penetrating glimpse of the obvious. That is why we have to make sure that we have the means to store or firm variable renewable energy. And again, it's been noted before, but I refer to it in the forward, but Andrew Blakers was very influential in my thinking, at the end of 2016, as I started to reflect as Prime Minister, drawing on a lot of expertise. And so I'm a great believer in talking to people that are smarter than me, and that gives me lots and lots of options, I might say. And I talk to a lot of people, but particularly Andrew, and asked him how we deal with this problem. And he pointed me to the opportunities for pump storage. As you know, I put that on the agenda in a speech at the beginning of 2017. And as soon as I'd given that speech, we called snowy hydro and hydro Tasmania. Snowy hydro were really excited. They found some old plans that hadn't been looked at for 30 years. And one of those is what has now become snowy hydro 2.0 linking the Tantangra and Talbingo reservoirs. They're about 700 meters difference in elevation and their big bodies of water. And they represent about 360 or 350 gigawatt hours of storage. So it's a massive scheme. And of course it involves the problem is there's 40 kilometers of tunneling to be done because there's a large mountain between them. But that will provide so much support for renewables, so much support for the clean energy transition. Had similar discussions with hydro Tasmania resulted in what became known, what we dubbed the battery of the nation scheme, regrettably, since I left office, very little has been done with that. And I've urged both sides of politics and any independence that are floating around to get cracking on that because we cannot delay this issue of long duration storage. And it is covered in the book. Well, I believe is actually what I've described as the crisis within the energy crisis. You know, the energy crisis, of course, is the need to rapidly make the transition to zero emission energy. And the, you know, the means the tools for that are described in this excellent book. But there is another crisis within that crisis. And that is the fact that the means of providing long duration storage, which involve for the most part, pumped hydro take a lot longer to build than a solar farm or a wind farm. And this temporal asymmetry creates a real challenge because it requires business industry above all it requires governments to think ahead and make sure you put the storage start getting the storage in place in advance of the, you know, the deployment of the variable renewables because they are, as you all know in this audience, they are absolutely destroying the business model of the thermal generators, because, you know, for much if you are a zero marginal cost generator like a solar farm or a wind farm. Obviously, you will be you can bid it, you know, one cent a megawatt hour is is is one cent to your bottom line, because you have no marginal cost. And so, inevitably, as we see now in Australia in the middle of the day, when there's a lot of solar around energy prices are very, very low. And obviously the thermal generators aren't can't make any money. So the crux so the point now is at those peaks. How do you provide that firming power? Well, you know, the gas people would say you burn gas, but we've got to stop burning fossil fuels. And I think we're starting to recognize that gases a transition fuel with lower emissions and say brown coal or black coal is not quite as simple as it appeared 10 years ago, because of the very high level of fugitive emissions and the increased thermal potency of methane. Now, obviously methane, depending on it, it's like a lot of analysis, you can get whatever result you like, or you can manage the result so you can smooth it by saying, well, you know, methane is potent. Yes, it's more potent, but not for nearly as long. Well, the reality is looking at these impacts over the long term is not terribly relevant right now because we have a very short term. We've got a near term problem. We've got a long term problem, but we don't have a lot of time to address it. We've got to get cracking between now and 2030. And so that's why it was good to see at the COP, the agreement among many nations, regrettably not Australia to address, you know, methane, methane emissions. I've talked about long duration storage and its importance. I want to touch on another issue which relates to hydrogen. Again, everyone in this audience understands the enormous, you know, the huge amount of energy that can be generated by the hydrogen molecule. The super molecule, what the atmosphere is made of, what we're in large part made of, but it has, when it reacts with other elements, when it's burnt or with oxygen, can't become, you know, turned back into water in a fuel cell, it generates an enormous amount of energy. But getting hydrogen doesn't exist very rarely by itself. And so the business of making hydrogen is not straightforward. Now, you know, my case has been, and I'm very pleased and proud to be helping Andrew Forrest with his green hydrogen agenda. My case is that the only hydrogen we should be aiming to produce is green hydrogen, that's to say, which is produced with zero emission electricity, renewable electricity. Not exclusively, but generally by process of electrolysis. Now, at the moment, most hydrogen, vast majority of hydrogen in the world, almost all of it in fact, is produced by steam, methane, reformation of natural gas, CH4. Essentially involves heating natural gas and steam up to a high temperature and the reactions that follow produce hydrogen on the one hand and carbon dioxide on the other. The production of hydrogen, this is called gray hydrogen, is very, very, very emissions intensive. And so the fossil fuel sector anxious to continue doing that have said, well, we should have blue hydrogen. And blue hydrogen, which sounds so much nicer is sort of reminds you of the blue sky or, you know, the ocean blue. It's nice color, like my jacket, I suppose, or the kangaroos behind me. But that blue hydrogen is one where you make hydrogen in the conventional manner that I've just described, but the carbon dioxide is sequestrated in some form or other pumped under the ground, you know, put into a saline aquifer or depleted gas field. In other words, carbon capture and storage. Let me just say to you that while I know there are hundreds, if not thousands of carbon capture and storage projects being listed and announced. The reality is that we, we meaning Australian taxpayers in this case, and taxpayers all around the world have spent billions of dollars on carbon capture and storage technology. I remember when the ANU thought it had great potential. I remember when the CSIRO thought it could be done for $30 a ton. But the fact is, it has not worked. And where it has worked, or where it does work, you can describe it as such, it is used for enhanced oil recovery. That is to say you have a gas field where the gas stream is CH4 methane and carbon dioxide. It's, you know, it's obviously much cleaner, simpler gas stream to deal with than what you'd get out of a power station. The CO2 is separated, pumped down into the reservoir to force more of the oil out of the bottom of the reservoir. Now, you know, that's, that may make sense from an economic point of view, but it certainly doesn't make sense from a climate point of view. So, you know, blue hydrogen is built on a premise that on, which has had billions of dollars spent on it over several decades, and which has rarely, if ever, succeeded. And, you know, we, I think, have to call that out for the BS that it is, you know, there comes a point where you have to say, if we have spent a fortune on a particular technique or technology, and we have not had success, surely we should be diverting our resources in another direction. Now, you know, one of the things that is not done effectively at the moment is the tracking of carbon capture and storage. Because you've got to remember that most people, most politicians certainly, you know, do not look at the history. They want to believe there are lots of options. They want to do nice things for the people, the big fossil fuel companies. And so, when they say, yes, we can do, we can capture all the CO2, and then the blue hydrogen will be just as, you know, good as the green hydrogen. That's what they want to hear. But, you know, we are right at the moment, and you see this in the United States with some of Biden's programs, you see it here. Governments yet again, putting money into carbon capture and storage with despite the fact that all of the evidence indicates it has not been in the past a good investment. So why should it be in the future? So one of the, apart from being a director of the International Hydropower Association and talking a lot about long duration storage and pump storage globally. I'm also working on green hydrogen. I'm the chair of the green hydrogen organization, which we've set up to promote the simple point that green hydrogen is the hydrogen that can, you know, can decarbonize so many of those difficult areas, like steelmaking, like cement, like shipping, heavy transport, and so forth. But we've got to be very careful of all of the distractions and diversions. I mean, just remember this, and I'll just leave you with this thought. The people that are bringing you blue hydrogen or clean hydrogen are the same people that brought you clean coal. Just remember that we have the tools to produce zero emission hydrogen. We have the tools to produce zero emission electricity. They're there. Doubtless they will become more efficient. You know, doubtless the cost per watt of PV modules will go even lower. I have no doubt about that. But we've got the tools to do it now. We can slash our emissions, save our planet and pay less for electricity. And we don't have much time to do it. So congratulations to all the authors. Congratulations to the ANU for sponsoring this book. Thank you very much. And I hope it sells everywhere. And as they say, available at good bookshops everywhere. Not quite sure why books are never available at bad bookshops. Perhaps there aren't the bad bookshops. But all the best. Thank you very much. Thank you, Malcolm. It is always startling to me to see a former Prime Minister with so much knowledge, so much passion. And it is really a great honor to have you with us tonight to launch this book. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr. Kathy Foley, who will chair tonight's panel discussion. Great to have you back again, Kathy. You and I are saying to spend a lot of time together, although mainly virtually, I should say. Kathy was appointed to the role of Australia's Chief Scientist after a lengthy career at CSIRO. Her appointment as CSIRO Chief Scientist began in August 2018. She was the second woman ever to hold that role. And of course, has then started much more recently in the role as Chief Scientist of the Australian government. Kathy, I have known for a long time having a great passion for advancing scientific research. And as a member of the Prime Minister's Science and Engineering and Innovation Council, where I think I first came across her. She's also served as President of the Australian Institute of Physics of interest to me as well. President of the Science and Technology Australia, Editor-in-Chief of the Superconductor Science and Technology Journal. There's a little tidbit that most of you don't normally hear. And of course, I also interact with her a lot as a council member at Questacon. So thank you, Kathy. The floor is yours. I'll start talking. Yes, I do. So look, hi everyone. It's great to be here. And really terrific to be invited to chair this session because I am not a climate scientist. I'm a superconducting electronics person. But superconducting electronics might be one of the solutions to actually reducing power losses in energy systems. And also potential flywheels and things like that. So I'm going to start off by introducing the panel. And hang on, I'm just going to go through my notes here. So first of all, welcome everyone. And it's great to be here. And also for coming tonight when it started off being a pretty crummy night. I started being all beautifully dressed as I'm always perfectly groomed and walked through pouring rain and you got me as I am. Actually, I'm always like this. So it was really great to have that introduction from the former Prime Minister, the Honourable Malcolm Turnbull. I think it was really good to sort of really challenge some of the thinking. But also giving us a bit of a starting point to see why this book is so important and why you all should go out and buy it. And we'll be asking for it to be under your Christmas tree after a week's time. So we've got a great lineup of the panellists tonight. And I'm going to go through them all because we've got the five editors here and we've got one of the authors. I think if they've got that correct. So let's bring them up on the stage and I'll introduce them one by one. So the first one is Professor Ken Baldwin. So come on, Ken. He's the Director of the ANU Grand Challenge Zero Carbon Energy for Asia Pacific. He's also the inaugural director of the former ANU Energy Change Institute. So welcome, Ken. This is a bit like a game show, isn't it? The next one is Professor Mark Howden. So coming up, Mark, he's the Director of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions and has been a major contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1991 and is now the Vice-Chair of the IPCC. So congratulations on that. That's fantastic. So welcome. Our next editor is Dr. Michael Smith. And he has been a research fellow or an adjunct senior lecturer at ANU since 2006. And he's co-authored or contributed to over 200 publications on climate change. So welcome, Michael. And I'd like to introduce now Professor Karen Hussey. And she's an honorary professor with the Center for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland. So Karen currently works in the Queensland government. So welcome, Karen. And she's online. Hi. Saving us lots of greenhouse gas emissions. Absolutely. And then we've got Dr. Peter Dawson. And he's a consultant and writer and former senior policy officer for the Australian government and has worked on the international trade, industry development, technology transfer, and government procurement policies. So welcome, Peter. You all right there? Yep. And then finally we have actually one of the authors of the chapters. And that is Dr. Fiona Beck. And she's a convener of the Hydrogen Fuels Project in the ANU Zero Carbon Energy for the Asia Pacific Grand Challenge. And she led the chapter in the book on the hydrogen economy. So welcome, Fiona. So this is something where I'm going to start by asking some questions just to get the things going. But also we really need you to put in your questions, as Brian mentioned before. And so to do that, what we're doing is using an online and in-person audience approach where we want you to download V-Vox, so it's V-E-V-O-X dot A-P-P, V-Vox app. Or you can run over to the side there if you're in the theatre and either use the QR code or they've got the numbers there. And the meeting number ID is, and I'll just quickly read that out, it's 182-224-822. And these are the details that were on the event page, so you can go there and find that. And what we want you to do is to put in your questions. And if you're interested in getting one to push up, which you've seen, please just press the like button or the thumbs up button, and then that will come up. And I have this instrument here, which I'm going to then work out how to use and be able to make that into, oops, and I've already got it wrong. So there we go. So we can look at that as they come in. So with that, we're going to kick off with the questions. So does that sound all right? All right. So, oh, just by the way, I should mention this is being recorded. So we can all go back and relive it. And for those who are not able to join immediately can join eventually. So I'm going to start with Michael. So I want to ask you, actually, just that really important thing what were you trying to achieve with the book? And actually, why is it relevant to have a textbook now? Thanks so much for that question. And thanks everyone for being here. And particularly also all the people who have logged in from Homes. We really appreciate the chance to share the key messages and key insights and the key sort of rationale that drove this project. In a nutshell, I'm going to start with Michael. In a nutshell, we felt there was a need for a new textbook in this space because it's not understating things to say that almost everything has changed in the last decade. All of us thought the sort of extreme weather events that we needed to mitigate climate change for, the sort of extreme ones that we're seeing today would be happening decades from now. But last summer, one in three Americans were negatively impacted by extreme weather events. One in three. We also, in the last decade, the science has firmed in terms of being crystal clear that this is now the critical decade. We can no longer have global emissions continuing to plateau or slightly rise. This is absolutely critical this decade that emissions by 2030 are reduced by at least 50%. And hence, it's absolutely essential that not just our university and Australian academics that came together, but all around the world, through the IPCC and other efforts, that we communicate how to achieve these reductions rapidly. A new textbook was also needed because the costs of climate mitigation have come down dramatically in the last decade, thanks as Malcolm alluded to, the game-changing innovations and advances in reductions in costs of all renewable energy types, but also in battery storage and also in many aspects of energy efficiency. This is now, if you like, flipped the sign on the cost of taking action on climate change. 10 years ago, all the literature was still saying, you know, it's still the costs of action, a lot less than inaction, there still were quite significant costs. Now the combination of the reductions in costs of technologies, plus advances in business model innovation combined with a complete change in the finance sector, now seeing this as low risk, providing access of cheap finance, and policy innovations. Combining all those four areas of innovations means that now taking action on climate change is actually the smart way to boost our economies out of the COVID recession. So these changes necessitate the need for a new interdisciplinary textbook, a textbook that needed to bring together such a diverse array of experts, which you see today. Oh, thank you. That's really interesting, Michael. And I think the thing which I like in your answer and actually from what I've taken from the book, which I've just looked at very briefly, is that it's something where it's, what I've been talking about all year, which probably some of you might be seeing me saying, but we should be remembering it's about science plus, science plus the engineering, science plus the business model, the social license, the user interface, the government policy and standards and regulations. And I think that's something which I think is a new way of thinking for many of us who've come in from the research field. Anyway, let's move on. I want to go to Mark because that sort of builds on from this is saying, boy, the book's pretty comprehensive. And so why do you think it is important that we do cover all the areas in something like this? Thanks, Kathy. It's a really great question. And I think it comes back to a realisation that every sector and every activity which humans undertake is a source of greenhouse gas emissions one way or the other. And that means we're all part of the problem, but we can also all be part of the solution by adapting to those changes. And it's because climate change impacts on all of the sectors in our economy and in our society. And so we've got this situation where there's an incredible amount of interaction between the greenhouse gas emissions and the climate impacts and adaptation side of things. And so one of the automatic consequences of that is we need to take integrated approaches. We need to take approaches which look at co-benefits across those different components, so co-benefits between mitigation and adaptation and vice versa. But we also need to start to think about very clearly the social and political and governance aspects because we need to have systems which actually work across boundaries rather than get siloed. And that's what this book tries to do. It tries to produce approaches which operate within each sector which are integrative across mitigation and adaptation but also have an overarching integration framework. And what's your favourite bit in it? Look, I think the first chapter, it really picks up the thread of the book. It contextualises the book and why it's valuable at this point in time, and it presents it as a handbook rather than as a textbook or an academic activity. It's pretty readable. I was actually ready to get in and start reading it before we're coming up here. I'm quite disappointed that I had to come and talk to you. But anyway, I'm going to move to Ken now because we've heard from the former Prime Minister about the importance of dealing with energy. And should the replacement of the fossil fuels with zero carbon and electricity sources followed by electrification of other forms of energy be the main priority since electricity is the easiest sector to address? Thanks, Cathy. Yes, I think that is the main game here because in most countries in the world, the energy use comprises of order 70 to 80% of the emissions. And of that, around about a third of the emissions come from the direct production of electricity. And if we can get that right, if we can convert all our electricity generation to renewable and zero carbon electricity and then propagate that through the system by replacing every other form of energy use, whether it's gas heating, whether it's oil for transport, whether it's coal for blast furnaces, replace all of that with electricity in all direct ways. For example, you could replace gas heating with heat pumps run by electricity. You can replace internal combustion engines with electric vehicles. And you can replace blast furnaces with steel production that uses hydrogen and renewable electricity. If you can do that throughout the economy, then you've addressed pretty much 70 to 80% of the emissions in any country. So the main game is using cheap renewable energy to transform the electricity system and then to electrify everything else. And as has been pointed out by Mike and others, you can actually make money by doing this because now renewables are the cheapest form of electricity generation and not only that in Australia, but we are the world leaders in adopting renewable energy. We have the highest adoption rate per capita of any country in the world and so we are leading the world in this transition. Really? Yeah, that's impressive. So then how do we go about decarbonizing sectors that actually can't be directly electrified? What would be the process there? No one's going to be surprised when I say hydrogen, I think, given my introduction and what was said by Malcolm Turnbull earlier. So this is hydrogen and hydrogen fuels, so things that we can make from hydrogen allows us to do what we call sector coupling. So sectors that can't be electrified, for example, making ammonia or other chemical processes, you can make hydrogen with renewable energy through electrolysis. That hydrogen then has zero embedded emissions and you can go on to use it in processes like fertilizer making and cut the emissions. So just by replacing fossil fuel-based hydrogen with renewable hydrogen, we could cut something like 2% of global emissions straight away. But there are other applications, new applications that are coming up that hydrogen can also help to decarbonize and Ken mentioned steel making is a really interesting one. So you can use hydrogen as the reduction agent instead of using carbon sources and you can really cut the emissions in that processing. So we can't just stop doing all this heavy industry because we need to stop emissions. We need to find other ways of doing it and finding renewable fuels is a really important solution to that. There are still issues relating to the development of hydrogen economy. So are there still science questions that need to be answered or research that needs to be done? Are we ready to just press scale and we just have to adopt it and scale up? That's a really good question. So we have electrolyzers. We've had electrolyzers for decades. I'd like to say that previously if you needed an electrolyzer you would get one custom built from the handful of companies around the world that did it and that would sit in the corner of your factory. What we need to happen now is for them to become modular and for production to ramp up and basically for what happened to solar cells to happen to electrolyzers for the cost to come down but you don't need any scientific breakthroughs. Tough for the scientists. Karen, I'm really keen to hear from you about where you think policy plays the role in this because that's going to be really critical. Thanks Kathy and let me start just by thanking A&U for enabling me to participate remotely. Although I have to say that I just don't think the screen you have has been on. We should all just be very grateful that I'm not insecure. It's a good question. What is the role of policy particularly when you have what Malcolm termed I really liked it poisonous political troika at play. The obvious example is that you need policy in order to be able to provide some certainty. So is that investors and business and industry and communities and households can all have confidence in the investments that they're making. But there's actually quite a number of other roles for policy that are much more boring and behind the scenes but are nevertheless absolutely critical in order to be able to see the technologies deployed in a way that is effective and efficient and frankly sustainable. So we're going to need to see policy step up and make sure that we're managing the trade-offs that inevitably exist. So up here for example in Queensland we're going to have significant capital investment over the next 15 years in renewable energy deployment but we need to make sure that that's not at the expense of revenant vegetation or threatened species habitat for example. We also need policy to make sure that we have secure supply chains for critical componentry and that's really been brought home to us I think in the last two years so we're going to need policy to make sure that we have the right standards for the technology and that componentry. Standards and the ISO are dull as dish water but if you want to have a smooth trading system in the technologies that we're talking about then you actually need to have standards that you can trust and in fact our ability to be able to commercialise and export the fantastic IP that Australian scientists generate really relies on government leaning into the development and deployment of standards. There's also a critical role for policy in providing the frameworks and the governance architecture and the integrity for things like carbon markets. So we know we're going to see extraordinary deployment of carbon offsetting over the next couple of decades but it'll be down to government and a number of third parties to make sure that we're doing that well that we're seizing those co-benefits for carbon offsets that exist and we're also going to need policy to be able to deal with things like order carbon adjustments because if we want to be able to maintain the market access that we have we're going to need that architecture and those governance arrangements to make sure our exporters who are doing the right thing and who are genuinely low carbon can have that market access. So I think that the technologies are absolutely the answer but the technologies will go nowhere if we don't have the right policy and governance and institutional frameworks in place to support their deployment. So look, thanks for that and so look, we've been looking at that from the Australian perspective but Peter, it is a global book and so I'm just curious to know if it's not just about Australia what's the thought about promoting it to influence other countries so that we heard it's a labour of love that's been going since what, 2015 in the development of it. So how are you going to take this to the world? I think you just have to talk into it and it'll turn itself on. Thank you for the question. My role in the book has been I guess the manager or coach the last lap of the race which has been the last three years and I've sometimes been referred to as a herder of academic cats. Cambridge University Press of course has a global network and they will be the main marketers of the book. We don't have the resources here I think to compete with that and we can only help them as best we can. It seems to me that our best focus is the region by which I mean South East Asia and within that Indonesia which is by far the biggest economy closest to Australia and at an interesting stage. I'd like if you don't mind to just reach out to our two Indonesian authors that's Professor Retno Goomelung Dewi and Dr Uchoch Siagyan it's an excellent chapter there are some parallels between our two countries Indonesia is a far-flung archipelago Australia a large island continent the challenges of distance are similar. We both are heavily reliant on coal and gas and we both have excellent potentialities for renewable energy. Failure to control climate change will have dire consequences for both our countries. Indonesia is moving more decisively towards a low carbon economy of late. Two recent initiatives have been a plan to phase out coal-fired power stations and a price on carbon a carbon tax which was passed by the day one just recently. There's a strong community-based movement for change a key leader is Mr Faby Tumiwa the CEO of the Institute for Essential Services Reform this organization is leading the charge to move public opinion and government policy towards a low carbon future. Hello to Pak Faby I think he's probably online he certainly said he would try to be. Thanks to you Pak Faby he has agreed to review our book and that means that it gets some exposure straight away to opinion makers and policy makers in our nearest and most important neighbour. We hope that our book can be useful to Indonesia and of course to other ASEAN countries. Indonesia has set to become a leading world economy by 2050 much larger than Australia's also by then we are likely to be part of the South East Asian electricity grid linked by undersea cables regional collaboration on energy makes a lot of sense. Finally I would like to say to my colleague editors and to all of the authors many thanks for your cooperation during my three year period of working on the book. Thank you very much. Thanks so much Peter that's really great now I'm going to be a bit naughty and actually ask a question to follow up on that because I know I'm going to go to the fabulous questions that are coming through here and I will get to them in a minute I was really interested in the idea of a redesign of the way energy provision is you talked about Asia Pacific energy provision with underground cables how do you think that's going to happen when we're looking at a world that is going to become we're seeing a shift away from a global approach to sovereignty and sovereign capability and it's not necessary for you to answer but for the panel of saying is this something where that challenge between sovereignty and global is going to be possible complexity that's going to thwart us to be able to achieve the zero emissions we're aiming for. Thanks for that additional question it's a very interesting one Indonesia as a matter of fact is particularly sensitive about relying on external sources for essential services and so on and needs to be convinced that it's in their interest but the interesting things happen I think the Sun Cable project Indonesia is backed by Mike Cannon Brooks and others also Tookie Forrest I think is planning to generate electricity in northern Australia supply Darwin and Singapore through an undersea cable which goes through Indonesia and Indonesia has agreed to the cable going through their country it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that if that works well and we should be the most competitive supplier because of the resources of central Australia of sunny radiance and also cheap will and it doesn't take much imagination to think that other undersea cables might be seen as economic and in fact the idea of a regional electricity grid is part of the concept of the Sun Cable project that's really interesting it's something I hadn't really heard about before so I'd heard about Sun Cable but not in that bigger picture but we better get on to these fabulous questions if that's okay I'm going to go first of all from Verity Morgan Schmidt who's asked a question saying huge thanks to all the editors and authors looking forward to reading the full book so good on you Verity can the panel comment on what role the land sector and rural Australia should be playing over one, five ten year horizons considering the social, political, economic and biophysical aspects so who wants to jump into that question go for it Thanks Verity for that question the land sector is critical so when we look at agriculture and food in Australia it's probably responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions across the globe it's about 29% as the average so it's far, far too big to ignore and that's just as an essential source of emissions from methane, nitrous oxide and also from activities like land clearing plus all of the pre-farm and post-farm emissions and so it's a complex web of greenhouse gas emissions and all the way along that web are opportunities for emission reduction and so it's not just on farm type activities even though a lot of the focus tends to be on that component but likewise as I mentioned before is that agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change particularly in Australia where perhaps the most vulnerable developed country in terms of climate change impacts and much of that will happen impact on the land sector so there's a combination of opportunity and vulnerability which I think is driving just within that sector so amongst other things a couple of the things that people are getting very excited about at the moment are the opportunities for storing carbon in biomass trees and shrubs but also in the soil in some cases that excitement is warranted in other cases it's probably overstated and so we need to bring some science to bear to that to actually assess when it makes sense and when the cost benefit in terms of dollars but on terms of environmental impacts on social impacts actually warrant that and I mentioned social impacts so for example you can see right now headlines in newspapers which are commenting on how carbon storage in southwest Queensland in western New South Wales people are buying up farms and locking them up and how that's trashing social values so people are leaving those regions the shops are closing down it's actually having very significant social impact so we need to think about this in an integrated way that's really interesting so did anyone else want to answer that because I want to just ask with the adoption quite often we talk about beef and cattle as being a major contributor of methane and I was at the OZ Innovation Awards which is a new innovation award program that was just set up from that web-based newspaper and the hero of the award and also one of the innovator awards was a company I forget what it's called but it's with a seaweed that's going to be used how realistic is that technology as a way forward for having a major reduction in the amount of say methane that comes from breeding cattle I'll pick that one up again so there's a range of opportunities there to reduce emissions from livestock the first one we should focus on is efficiencies so if you can increase efficiencies in our sector you produce much less greenhouse gas per unit product per kilo of meat or per liter of milk so that's the first thing we should focus on secondly we can use additives such as the seaweed but also other additives which have actually been approved by regulators overseas that actually significantly reduce emissions by about 40% or more especially in intensive livestock industries so not for the extensive industries that characterize most of Australia's industry there are some issues around seaweed which tend not to be talked about and that's issues about environment and health impacts so the key ingredient the thing makes the seaweed reduce emissions is a broma form and that has significant potential health implications for animals so it causes lesions within the animals gut when you actually use it and we don't want to compromise our supply chain so we need to ensure that those products which include the seaweed are approved and regulated as any other product so we actually ensure that we have good supply chains we need to put in place research and development in this sector as we do right across the board we're currently over relying in my view on past basic research and leveraging that into the applications we need to continue our investment in basic research and at the moment Australia is disinvesting in that as you'd be very well aware Kathy and we really need to do that and we've got a huge advantage in Australia because we're really good at doing some of that basic research and having a pipeline through to application I'm going to go on to another question from Anonymous it's got 12 votes here has the government's low emissions technology statement in 2021 captured the right technologies and what new and existing technologies should be considered so we need to sort of be very clear on the framing of the low emissions technology roadmap and statement the Commonwealth government is very clear that the role of the low emissions technology roadmap is not to focus on technologies that are already mature, that are already competitive and we've heard today already from Malcolm and others that there is a huge suite of technologies that are ready to go now you've got jurisdictions like the one we're launching the book in, Canberra have been using those technologies well everyone knows Canberra's cut its scope one and two emissions by 45% by 2020 what a lot of people don't realise is Canberra's emissions peaked in the latest 2014 so the ACT ACT has actually cut its emissions 60% scope one and two in the last six years so that shows you what's already mature and ready with the right policy settings in terms of what renewables are ready so that the role of the low emissions technology roadmap is a classic Karen you may wish to jump on on here to classic government policy to address the valley of death for technologies that are currently not commercially viable and mature and in that roadmap they've targeted six main technology areas and those do align with what Malcolm was talking about with hydrogen and the need to and what Fiona talked about in terms of the opportunities but also the steps that need to be gone through there it also picks up on the soil carbon issue that Mark raised also the need that Malcolm Turnbull eloquently talked about to manage renewable transition well with a focus on energy storage and doing that well so overall the low emissions technology roadmap and the opportunities that it's targeting with green steel, green cement technologies that once if we can make commercial have huge economic potential for Australia and for the regions picking up on that previous question where I feel there's criticism of the roadmap is the father understand that it's not covering all that we can do already and perhaps the federal government needs to better communicate that and better communicate with the state governments of how they're working in concert there's a risk if the government doesn't communicate that better because they are correctly focusing money and resources on these key technologies that need effort to get to market and get over the valley death more communication is needed on all that business could be already doing now as well at the same time so I'm going to follow up on this with the hydrogen as an example and so Fiona you might be a good one to answer this question is that all the states have got a hydrogen plan, we've got hubs, we've got a national plan, we've got things really building up at a great rate so I'm just wondering have we actually got that all stitched up properly, is that communication an issue what do you see are the steps that are needed to really make this the success that it could be that's a really good question so I'll start by saying that I think the national hydrogen strategy was a really good approach so they talked about having an adaptive approach you know not jumping all in and assuming that hydrogen was the thing that was going to take off in the future another thing they did they talk about are hydrogen hubs so one of the problems with rolling out a hydrogen economy is unlike renewable energy you need a whole new set of infrastructure you know if you switch from fossil power to renewable power doesn't really make any difference to the switch on your wall right you switch it on your light comes on you don't need to change anything it's not quite the same with hydrogen because it's a different form of energy we're going to have to change a whole bunch of things you know and getting that infrastructure in place before we have a demand is really hard so one of the things they've been talking about is the hydrogen hubs where they have producers of hydrogen and users of hydrogen sitting alongside one another also near existing infrastructure like ports or transmission lines things like that perhaps one thing I like less about the hydrogen strategy is their approach of and I did notice that Malcolm Turnbull also did the air quotes I've been doing this air quote myself of clean hydrogen including both renewable and fossil fuel based hydrogen with CCS so in one reading of this this is a technology neutral approach but I really feel that we should be focused very strongly on the emissions intensity involved in making that hydrogen and we should be really focusing on zero if not zero then very very near zero so in my opinion the sort of focus on CCS technologies in the low emissions roadmap is not really the best way forward for the hydrogen industry now CCS is going to be important in order to reduce emissions in industries where we don't have any other solution at the moment but since we have a solution for making hydrogen in a clean way and fully renewable then I feel that that's something that we should be going in 100% not being distracted by CCS so that's really good and fossil fuels have been exceptionally successful in terms of provision of energy because it's high density energy in a small volume when we're looking at transitioning to a hydrogen economy I was in a panel recently with Japan and they were saying that come on hydrogen from Australia, Germany saying the same thing so we're being seen as the pathway to providing the world not just with cables of solar power into Singapore and so on but also as a hydrogen clean energy but the scale is the thing which is hard to comprehend and I'm just curious to know, it looks like Ken's excited by this one is that how do we actually get the scale I was talking to someone who said that if you look at the particular project that's going on somewhere which sounds really big even just deal with our domestic market we need 300 and something of those particular huge projects just to get the domestic level of hydrogen we need to deal with our current energy needs to then be able to move away from fossil fuels if we're going to then be able to supply the rest of the world that's mind boggling so I'm just curious to know how you see the scale up and what that really means in terms of the infrastructure the jobs, the ability to actually deliver as a country so that's a really interesting question Kavi and let me just paint a quick numerical picture for you Australia is a major producer of energy we export massive amounts of energy in liquid natural gas and coal and we're also a major commodity exporter of iron ore and aluminium ores so let's just say that the world wants to continue to buy energy from Australia to obtain metals from Australia as well but they do that in a renewable way okay so let's say we export electricity through undersea cables we export hydrogen made from renewable electricity and we turn our existing mineral ore deposits into green steel and green aluminium using renewable electricity and hydrogen we've calculated the numbers in the grand challenge zero carbon energy for the Asia Pacific that would be needed to do this and the numbers are enormous in order to replace our current energy exports and to convert our mineral exports into green metals would require something like 27 times the amount of electricity that Australia generates at the moment and this would all be done with wind farms and solar farms so these are really huge numbers so how do you get to that scale how do you build the demand worldwide for hydrogen for green steel etc etc so that's the key geopolitical and economic question building the market while creating the tech you've got to build the market that's the very first thing you've got to do so when you're talking to Japan and you're talking to Germany we've got to be talking about how we get the supply chains going how we scale up the infrastructure and companies are out there willing to make these investments there are two massive investments one is a 26 gigawatt so give you an idea of a gigawatt a major thermal power station is a gigawatt say 26 of them using solar and wind up in the Pilbara and a 50 gigawatt project in the Nullarbor are being proposed at the moment to export green hydrogen and green ammonia and if we had 20 or 30 or 50 of those we'd be talking the same numbers as we're exporting now in coal and natural gas so I've got two questions I want to follow on from that one is actually from an anonymous which is probably one for Karen to answer I think is that how do we actually better mobilize the trillions of private investment needed to drive the energy transition that's one question then another one is if we're going to be having all this stuff happening in lands which we normally think of are actually owned by our indigenous people where does the role of an indigenous population come in and our actual ability to use those lands in those ways have we actually brought on that social license to allow us to actually do that and do we have the right to do that when it's not is not our land to actually make those decisions on so yeah Karen do you want to start thanks Kathy I'll take the first one at least is there an echo or is that just go for it you're fine so how do we mobilize the trillions of dollars of investment that we know is out there the first is to make it loud and clear that we're open for business and I think what we've seen and I'm deliberately being slightly careful in my wording given where I work now but I think what we've seen in the last couple of years is the states in particular make it clear that they're open for business there's a very clear sort of what you might call a competition between certainly Victoria New South Wales and Queensland and being able to say we want that investment we're open for business and this is the trajectory that we're on and certainly New South Wales in the last six months alone has done a lot to make it clear that we are in fact in a sort of a competitive tension or foreign direct investment as well as domestic investment and I think that's a healthy thing in the absence of a very strong federal leadership having that competitive tension from the states and territories is a good thing I think in all honesty though it's not unrelated to the previous discussion around the supply and demand and the need to be able to match supply and demand and what we're finding up here is that this is the art of coordination so we know that we need to deploy an extraordinary amount of renewable energy in order to meet our existing targets and likely any future targets but given the structure of our energy system and the continued current role of coal-fired power stations in that energy system we actually really need the demand piece to be lifted to suck up the excess supply in order to genuinely move towards renewable energy at the expense of coal-fired power now in order to increase that demand side we're genuinely asking for industry development and so that is my doll desperately trying to get into the study because my 12 year old has decided not to take care of the dog, my apologies to everyone in the audience so what we need is that demand side industry policy to be driven as hard as possibly can because you can't do the supply side unless you know you've got the demand side to suck it up and I think a lot of that comes down to having the policy settings in place to be able to provide that confidence to investors that their money is well spent here and as I say I think that competitive tension between the states is actually quite a healthy thing and how about the, thanks for that Karen and the Indigenous question so I think that's something we need to really take into account as we move towards reconciliation and things like that certainly and there are enormous opportunities for Indigenous communities around Australia to benefit from this transition the major projects that are being proposed for energy export are built around renewable energy farms up in the north and north west of Australia and these are of course predominantly on Indigenous lands and the real challenge and this is something that we're addressing in zero carbon energy for the Asia Pacific is to establish ways to capture the benefit of these enormous projects for the local Indigenous communities and this doesn't just simply mean jobs on the renewable energy farms, the wind farms, the solar farms what it really means is co-investment in these enormous projects so that there is ongoing benefit over many generations for the communities that live there and this is a model that's being developed at the moment and we're doing research on this as well and to point out that this isn't like mining, mining is about going in, digging a hole in the ground, extracting ore and then going away within a few decades Renewable energy development is a very long-term activity, this could be hundreds of years, it could be many generations benefiting from this and more or less the land on which the Indigenous peoples live remains unchanged during this process and it can be returned more or less to its original state so custodianship of that land is going to be really, really important during these very long-term investment opportunities for our Indigenous communities There's so many questions here I don't even know which one to ask next there's a lot there so this is one from David Osmond who's been upvoted and saying given the success of the renewable energy target how should we now introduce Green Hydrogen Target or should we now introduce a Green Hydrogen Target? Peter, did you want to answer that? Yup Did you want to answer that one? Did you want to answer that question? Oh, okay It's asking about whether or not we should introduce a Green Hydrogen Target So I actually think that it's a bit apples and oranges so the renewable energy target was about replacing existing demand with renewable energy The Green Hydrogen as we've been saying the demand isn't necessarily there yet There's this opportunity to export Australian sunlight to other countries but other countries are not actively buying it yet so there really is it becomes a little bit more complicated It's interesting to see that some of the first movers in this space are looking at replacing existing uses of hydrogen for example in making of ammonia for fertilizer and things like that we're also seeing a lot of movement in steel making and mining and these are applications where energy is already expensive because they're trying to do their mining in the middle of nowhere they have to actually get their energy out there if they can make it on site and make green hydrogen then that could actually be quite a good solution for them but the large scale markets just haven't developed yet so it is a bit challenging to drive that demand and I'm not sure that a target is necessarily the best way of doing that This is something which is sort of interesting and it's a question here about how you actually deal with the materials and a lot of things so electricity and electrification uses lots of copper and I guess there's also the potential of carbon nanotubes which are potential conductors is there the potential to really rethink the material side of things this is a question from Graeme Anderson which I'm sort of hacking around a bit so sorry Graeme when we're looking at some of these things at scale, the material side of it do we have to start having a thought about the R&D that's necessary so that we're rethinking instead of just substituting the way we've always done things but actually looking at new materials and new ways of using excess carbon and turning it into carbon nanotubes instead of as a way of carbon captured storage using carbon in a different way because it's a pretty useful element in itself I know none of you are materials people I'm just curious to know if you've got a thought about that Karen do you want to take not so much as an input but I wouldn't say we need to be a much more clever about the back end so when solar panels have come to their end of life when wind turbines need to be replaced we're going to have to get a lot more sophisticated about being able to recycle the individual componentry in a way that is better than we have done in the past so at the moment there's very little capacity for us to recycle PV panels there are companies that are doing it but just as we're going to have batteries deployed at scale wind and solar and EVs all of that kit eventually will come to an end of its life and wouldn't it be great if it didn't end up in landfill but we got our acts together at the front of the process and said well how are we going to make sure that we had the end of waste codes in place so that they can be redeployed how can we do the R&D now to make sure that those materials are used again and again and again so basically there's sort of at least three aspects to your question there's the not necessarily focusing on carbon capture and storage carbon capture for utilization and the huge amount of research and startups in that space and the potential for them to be creating negative carbon technologies would be one of definitely the sort of spaces you'd want to see more funding and more research to help the globe meet the Paris targets and as Karen's alluded to all of the clean technologies actually have quite high metal densities as we transition to a zero carbon economy the actual metal density of the economy goes up substantially we have a whole chapter on this in the book and what to do about it but so there's three big opportunities here for resource rich countries which are pivotal it's a pivotal part of the book namely providing pathways for existing businesses and industries to say you already have the skills we just need to shift this way a bit so Australia and many other resource rich countries are blessed with these critical minerals that are critical to meet the demand for all of these technologies but also we have great local and global expertise in what Karen's alluding to which is the end of life story where we are recycling higher and higher percentages of this content there's a UNEP international resources panel that's done 10 years of work on this including reports on how to lift metal recycling rates there's a huge opportunity in Australia for the circular economy to be taking the lithium to be making the batteries here because batteries used in the transport sector actually are so well designed already they can be repurposed and reused in the stationary energy and buildings and industry sector for another 10 years after so there's studies showing which we reference in the book that the energy storage needs of this transition are going to be able to be met by 2030-2035 by a lot of these repurposed EV batteries and there's Australian startups and companies that are already at the forefront of that there's already bus batteries being repurposed around the world there's already really exciting opportunity to very systemically move to a closed circular economy that creates multiple new businesses and jobs in all countries around the world did you want to say something Peter? I wonder if I could add something to first of all apologies for my poor hearing I had difficulty hearing the question adding to what Fiona said and what I perhaps should have said earlier in thinking about relations with the region and the development of systems of course that energy and grid is probably a long way in the future but maybe the beginning of it's not Indonesia doesn't want to buy electricity from Australia at the moment at least I don't think it does I think we have to think very much in terms of win-win strategies especially with South East Asia and we should be looking for opportunities for what Indonesia can do and Indonesia has some capacity to generate energy especially from the eastern end and has some expertise and we should be thinking in terms of cooperation on equal footing but working together to produce something worthwhile and workable for the whole region okay so thank you Peter we've run out of time we've got a big long list of questions here but we do have to finish I want to thank all the people who have put in questions which we haven't been able to answer and there's some of them like how come we were able to get solar and wind up and going what was the magic thing that happened that was from Andrew Blake and another one actually asking about budgetary pressures so we're not going to be able to answer those we're not going to be able to hang around you might be able to mob the panel and ask those questions afterwards but I'm going to pass back to Brian so back to you Brian alright well that was great I learned a lot and I always love learning a lot but we can see that the conversation we've only hit the tip of the iceberg based on all the questions that remain unanswered a lot of those questions I think are actually embedded in this book and so my guess is probably not going to be something you're going to knock off in a day or two but hopefully as a guidebook for our policy makers it's something that can really get us on a pathway to rapid change and I think what you see here is the opportunity for Australia as a nation is enormous we are once again the lucky country we have the generals we have the space, the land we have the opportunity to become the world's cheapest supplier of energy and a bunch of value added industries right now that we just ship out can you also remember that we've got fantastic intellectual capability in our universities and research agencies I couldn't say it better myself thank you you should become the chief scientist of Australia so I think this is something to smile about to be happy about and rather than to look at our this, this is a huge great news story for us we just have to seize the day and I encourage everyone in this audience to do what you can to do it and I'm going to be celebrating by noting that my Tesla power wall has been keeping my house with power during the entire talk because the power is out at home and I'm running on solar myself all for a price about a third of what I was paying before I put in my solar and my power and that is the technology you have a much better system, much more liable and it's cheaper so it really is just part of getting your act together and doing it thank you everyone thank you everyone for coming along those online really appreciate it thank you for joining us virtually as well cheers