How can a company like Liquid contribute to the disruption of climate change – apart from being mindful of our carbon emissions as a business and making green decisions in our individual lives?
Climate tech is not our area of expertise; but we know there's value in bringing people together to solve important problems.
Sharing ideas across industries and collaborating with people who bring different perspectives can set you up for a solution – and that's what can help us all transition to a sustainable way of life.
It’s easy to feel pessimistic when climate experts tell us we could be just 10 years away from more serious and frequent fires, droughts, floods and cyclones.
But our latest Future Led panel was optimistic in the face of all this. They can see the confluence of technology, investment, and consumer demand happening that could result in action.
Our speakers included:
- Julia Playford, Executive Director of Science Development at the Queensland Department of Environment and Science
- Daniel Roberts, who leads CSIRO's Energy Technologies Research Program
- Amelia St Baker, Digital Lead at Evie Networks
Daniel Roberts from CSIRO's Energy Technologies Research Program.
The technology exists, private investment is happening, consumer adoption is going up – but there’s still work to do in bringing different industries together.
Daniel said even cross-industry conversations, like Future Led, were critical.
"We’re talking about cars and power generation and hydrogen ... those three sectors haven’t really worked together much before. They've never had to,” he said.
“Now, we've got hydrogen as a way to stabilise the grid and decarbonising exports, we’ve got EVs (electric vehicles) as a way of decarbonising transport but also as an energy-storage opportunity.
“It’s about linking up sectors that haven’t been linked before so we can all lean in … and talk to each other and distribute some of this information.”
Julia Playford from Queensland Department of Environment and Science.
This collaborative aspect of climate tech was a genuine opportunity, Julia added, because as more industries seek to transition to lower- or zero-carbon operations, there will be some who will need help in getting there.
“That’s the industry opportunity... that we really need to build in the sense that, every industry is going to have to respond at some point, preferably sooner rather than later,” she said.
"We have to sort the energy problem – that's the crucial thing that needs to be sorted out at whole scale, but then every industry is going to need to respond itself, reduce its use of carbon and make a difference there.”
Amelia St Baker from Evie Networks.
Reducing emissions in cities is one of those big problems that still needed to be tackled, Amelia
said.
“My role is about getting the adoption of electric cars to be accelerated through digital means," she said.
“The shift to electric cars is important for the de-carbonisation of our cities, especially. Going back to that IPCC report, we have the biggest issues in cities.”
And with the Olympics coming to Brisbane in 2032, our city will get a huge chance to showcase what’s possible.
“Brisbane-based companies are going to be watched like they have never been watched before, they’re going to come under criticism like they’ve never come under before, and it’s a new opportunity for trade,” Amelia said.
“I think companies themselves are going to want to be set up to be on that global stage.”
The impacts of technology in tackling climate change are huge, but our speakers also covered topics such as investment, consumer demand and adoption, and the forces of international trade.
Julia said policy changes in Europe and Japan would force our export industries to make changes in order to remain competitive.
And, Daniel added, international changes would have flow-on effects for local innovation and the domestic market.
“The fact that we're getting the big oil and gas companies, big power companies, companies that are massive, the richest people in this country who weren’t even part of energy and now are transitioning into that because they want to make a difference – I think it’s a good sign,” he said.
And in the end, climate change is a problem we can all contribute to solving.
“You can get mired in the politics of the identification of the problem before you start trying to solve the problem. Once people move on to solving the problem, things are very solvable,” Julia said.
