Past Summits | 2011 Australia Working Tracks

What scenarios will play out in this triangle? What opportunities are in the market right now to shake up this industry with new business models that deliver food security, carbon reductions wealth, and a high capability sector? Will 50% of our produce how can we catalyse innovations to get the traction necessary to reward investors? What’s the bottleneck? And how will new business models allocate value?

Innovation is lightning speed and buyers are providing strong demand signals. The problem is that customers are finding it difficult to evaluate renewable fuel options in this rapidly changing space. Regulators and investors have limited knowledge on the impact of the fuels at scale. Fuel companies need advanced market commitments and are forced to use expensive equity to finance refineries instead of project finance. The question is, how to oil the fuels?

What is it about the Australian market in particular that requires many of our best and brightest cleantech innovators to locate finance overseas? And is it all capital funding that is required? Are there new forms of trade and operating finance that will meet the needs of the new carbon-free economy? And what holds back the $1260 bn in funds held by Australians in superannuation? And self-managed super funds have grown 300% in ten years. How can this cleantech investment opportunity be harvested?

Cement accounts for 4% of global emissions. With large infrastructure and city and housing development growing exponentially in the growth economies, the pressure on cement steel and glass carbon is set to soar. New designs, new materials, new methods of construction, design at micro and macro level, all opportunities to profit early from phenomenal growth in low carbon products, services, design.

Energy is the critical sector for carbon reduction. The global market for clean energy has already taken off -USD$243 billion last year and it couldbe $1.36-$5 trillion by 2020. How much of this will be, or could be in Australia? How can businesses make money and build markets against a backdrop of a challenging policy environment? What is a sustainable level of investment for large energy users and which basket of technologies offer greatest return?

Energy Efficiency has been the “low hanging fruit” for a long time. It seems that the world is finally starting to put their creative thinking caps on to project financing through Energy Efficiency agreements that deal with financing challenges. What other possibilities are there? What are the catalysts to getting the financing flowing: technologies, measurement and verification, algorithms, contractors, and project aggregators?

There is no doubt that the supply chain could be one of the best places to reduce emissions and save money. But how do you get the marketplace moving? What are the barriers that entrepreneurs see to getting their money-saving ideas adopted by the marketplace: finance, standards, inertia, information, training, and any other barriers to gigaton scale?