Support for decarbonisation technologies in Queensland

Technology is essential to achieving decarbonisation goals. But what are these technologies, who is involved, and what are the applications for Queensland?

This was the first topic in a webinar series exploring the decarbonisation technology in Queensland as part of the Queensland Decarbonisation Hub . Panelists included:

• Claudia Vickers : Director, BioBuilt Solutions Co-Founder & CSO, Senseory Plants, Adjunct Professor, QUT
• Peter Laurie : New Ventures & Innovations Advisor, Director and Founder, Junta Pty Ltd
• Philippe Ceulen : Startup Community Leader, Director, Innovation Architects, Partner, Mandalay Venture Partners
• Charlotte Connell : Climate Innovation and Investing, Director of Impact for Climate Zeitgeist, Climate Tech Ambassador for Greenhouse, Founder of The Sustainability Collective

We also heard from Dr Moudassir Habib , Research Officer, Regional Economies Centre of Excellence, University of Southern Queensland, about the development of the taxonomy used in the decarbonisation technology and policy mapping process.

Through defining and mapping decabonisation technology and the intersection of technology with policy, place, and impact, the Queensland technology theme supports the three other themes:

• Regional and community transformation,
• Nature-based solutions and environmental integrity, and
• Sectoral pathways to help Queensland industries, governments and communities leverage the opportunities toward net zero.

You can watch the conversation below:

We started with a brief presentation by Dr Habib, who shared a draft of the taxonomy being developed for the mapping process. The taxonomy is informed by a review of decarbonisation technology approaches from other countries, industry bodies, and research. Like any categorisation in a developing field, the taxonomy provides a framework for a shared understanding and is expected to evolve through application and feedback.

One of the outcomes of the technology theme from the hub will be an interactive public map of the intersection of technology, support, policy, and place. A taxonomy provides the groupings against which we can label technologies and startups, policy initiatives of strategies, roadmaps, and funds; support providers such as incubators and programs; and connections to geographic places and local impact.

After Habib's presentation, the panellists shared views on how to best support decarbonisation technology in Queensland. Peter Laurie started with the need for the ability to operate in uncertainty in an emerging field such as decarbonisation.

"Safety comes from the plan - to create a plan that's coherent, makes sense, and will get approved and get funding. You have to make all these assumptions. As soon as one of those assumptions is wrong, the plan's wrong.

.;In the startup community, we talk about that as MVPs, or Minimum Viable Products. In large infrastructure projects or projects where we are talking about decarbonization, people get concerns that it has to be working for us to be able to get the funding."

"I talk about ways we can prove it's worth putting effort into without actually knowing what's going to be the outcome. I'm kicking off an accelerator program called Inductive which is focused around later-stage investment. The focus is to get it through to actual investment."

Charlotte expanded on Peter's views from her roles advocating and promoting climate tech solutions across Australia and overseas. Her perspective highlighted uncertainty from political shifts while also having confidence in Queensland's political bipartisan support and natural regional advantages.

"I have been involved in the climate tech ecosystem, building that up across Australia and New Zealand. I now work in Melbourne with an organisation helping to build up the climate investor ecosystem. It still amazes me that not everybody knows each other and we need to have those co-investments happening to de-risk and do due diligence to help accelerate these solutions."

"I also work for Greenhouse, which is Australia's first climate tech hub based in Sydney. I'm the climate tech ambassador. I wear many different hats, but it's all around the climate tech innovation ecosystem and trying to progress that and move it forward. I'm based in Queensland and as a proud Queenslander I do see that Queensland has these key ingredients."

"Peter talked about uncertainty. We have an election coming up in federal and state and there is uncertainty around that. Uniquely in Queensland, we have bipartisan support for the emissions reduction target of 75% by 2035. That's a key ingredient to have continuity and confidence that these solutions will be progressed."

"I also feel in Queensland we have this incredible regional advantage, which traditionally in tech and economics has been a disadvantage. While cities can be the locus of innovation, these regional areas have the land and space, but also the intimate knowledge of the challenges of climate change. They will be the leaders in the future and are already leading."

"I also spend some time overseas helping to promote the climate innovation ecosystem in Australia. Undoubtedly, we are leading the world in terms of agriculture and food production. They look to what we do here because we've had to produce food under the harshest of conditions. They also look to us as the envy of the world in terms of solar rooftop penetration. We have cheap and abundant renewable energy and we also have over 50% of the critical minerals that will fuel the transition. Australia is a huge player globally. We just have to push the policies and capital behind it to realize it."

Phil introduced his role with innovation advisory firm Innovation Architects and venture capital firm Mandalay. Phil provided an overview of questions he asked as part of his role with the Low Carbon Accelerator

"I'm the director with an innovation advisory firm called Innovation Architects based in Brisbane and a Partner in Mandalay. Mandalay is an early stage venture capital firm focused on Series A investments in AgriFood technology. Those who know me know that I approach everything with an ecosystem mindset. We have a huge responsibility as an innovation ecosystem as a whole, including leaders and actors within that ecosystem to support decarbonization and climate tech through collective learning."

"How do we talk about this stuff? How do we measure and monitor? How do we collaborate? Startups have strong commercial pathways. The impact thesis here is that the decarbonization impact comes from this commercial success of those entities. It's not the be-all-end-all of decarbonization in its spectrum but it's the type of tech that can be taken by smaller companies and organisations and try to rapidly bring to market."

"One project we've been lucky to deliver over the last two years is the Queensland Low Carbon Accelerator which focuses on emerging innovation and technology startups that are at that stage where they are struggling with the first customer problem. It's a big one in climate as well as startups in general."

"How do we support them to have early pilot project commercial trials when there is a huge amount of uncertainty as to how we're going to be working together? How do we match startups to industry partners, collaborate on projects, and support them through mentoring and funding? There's grant funding attached to the program, so how do we get meaningful outcomes not just in terms of future decarbonization or potential decarbonization outcomes, but can we nail the initial validation? Can we nail some of the initial business model? Can we continue to refine the tech based on what the industry actually needs? What's really important? That’s top of mind for me right now."

"We focus heavily on AgriFood technologies which is almost synonymous to climate and sustainability these days. You can't invest in the future of agriculture and food systems without having sustainability top of mind. A few examples on where decarbonization comes into playincludes soil and ocean carbon, new production systems, balanced protein futures (both alternative proteins as well as how we work with our current protein systems and livestock), energy on farm, supply chain considerations, data optimization, land use, and then all of the things that sit tangential - natural capital, biodiversity. and so on."

Claudia shared her journey from academic researcher to entrepreneur, highlighting a successful career in government research and as a startup founder. Her story highlighted a life mission of applied research translation to address climate change impacts. Claudia also outlined her experience with advocacy and political engagement.

"I am a technologist entrepreneur. I was an academic for 25-plus years and I'm still an academic. Like Charlotte, I wear many hats. I've got a research program at Queensland University of Technology where we do metabolic engineering mostly in yeasts. We redesigned cells to make industrially useful molecules, and that's a lot of fun. I've been very active in the last two decades in building a field called synthetic biology in Australia, which is the engineering toolbox we use to modify cells and living systems for industrial applications and for metabolic engineering applications. That involved building the community, establishing a professional society in synthetic biology in Australia and New Zealand, working with state and federal governments on policy initiatives, writing roadmaps, working on roadmaps, et cetera."

"I went from the University of Queensland, where I spent 15 or so years, to CSIRO, where I ran their synthetic biology program, establishing a collaborative community of practice across Australia, working with academics, CSIRO, and industry on how we can build the community and effective routes to translating technology and making a real-world difference. That was a $60 million program with 250 people involved and international collaboration bringing technologies into Australia and sharing workforce. It was very successful in kick-starting a synthetic biology field in Australia. We also got partway through secured funding for a center of excellence in synthetic biology."

"That program is continuing on in CSIRO. One thing I realised towards the end is that technology transfer was something I've been passionate about but didn't really know very much about and didn't feel we did as well as we needed to do in terms of translating the technologies that we developed inside the program. There were a number of startups and licensed technologies, but I didn't feel I understood what is required to get tech out of the innovation system and into making a difference in the world. I went from CSIRO with layers of bureaucracy of a government department into the startup world. It was a vertical learning curve for me going from a hierarchical bureaucratic environment to extreme speed, agility, and fundraising."

"I loved it. I found it was my natural home. I'm not a great lover of bureaucratic systems and slowing down. I learned an enormous amount. I spent a few years doing that for a couple of different startup companies and then decided that if I wanted to have the biggest impact, I could take this background, experience, and knowledge and share it. If I'm working in just one company, I can only have impact in one space. If I'm working with lots of different companies, I can have an impact in lots of different spaces. So I started a consulting company about 12 to 18 months ago."

"I decided I would work out how I was going to have an impact on this existential threat of climate change in a meaningful timeframe. That's the next part of my research focus until the end of my life. I went, "Okay, how am I going to do this? I'll need to sit down and develop a white paper that looks more broadly at what needs to be done." Part of that has been developing a matrix to explore what broad things are needed for any technology to have an impact in the climate space. I worked with different startups in a variety of different technology areas. I started my own startup a couple of weeks ago to explore the process of early stage startups and venture capital. I also work with venture capital companies doing due diligence and mentoring people."

"I see the situation in Queensland as a bipartisan shift Charlotte referred to towards putting policies in place. When you see a new move sweeping in, politicians start asking people whether they should be interested. That's your opportunity to say, "Yes, you should be interested. This is really quite consequential for us. Then, you start linking it to issues that could affect the voting preferences and constituencies. They start asking for roadmaps and policy reports and getting one of the big firms involved. I've been engaged in that and seen real activity and engagement from political sectors wanting to move this forward. That's really exciting. I've seen this before as we've moved through the technological phases addressing major issues. I think we have an incredible opportunity to do great things."

The conversation shifted to the future as we explored what might need to happen to support technology applications to decarbonisation over the next 12 months. Claudia highlighted the need to understand the significance of the overall goal, a need for circular economies, and to take action in the short term.

"First look at where we need to get to. That needs to be clear before we can look at what we can do in the next 12 months. We need to decriminalize the carbon economies to get to sustainability. We need to understand what that looks like."

"It's driving net emissions to zero, but also creating a massive carbon sequestration industry. It's something like 50 gigatons per annum of carbon that we need to remove from our emission sector and another 50 gigatons per annum of carbon that we need to sequester back to stabilize our atmosphere. I can't even give you an example of 50 gigatons of carbon. It's so inconceivably big. So, we need technologies that will deliver at scale."

"We also need circular energy, circular materials, and circular food. That means we need to revolutionize what our cities look like. We currently have very linear economies where everything's produced, the countryside is bought into the city, people utilize it, and then the waste that is produced is shipped back out to the countryside and put into landfill. That needs to change to a circular economy. It is going to take dramatic changes to the way we build our cities, the way we build our communities, and the way that we live in those communities. We probably have less than 50 years to make dramatic change."

"In terms of what we do in a given period of time, we overestimate what we can achieve in the next five years and underestimate what we can achieve in the next 10 years. Don't be lulled into inaction. Bill Gates said that. Venture capitalists say this is what we are going to do with your $3 million in two years. Those are important steps. It is better to do something than to do nothing. It's better to explore what's feasible in that period of time. So in a 12-month period, I would say it's a matter of putting as many eggs in the basket as possible in terms of technological solutions as we possibly can."

"Another thing is geoengineering and aerospace engineering. A lot of people freak out about this. People believe we are going to get to the stage where we actually have to consider geoengineering to stop catastrophic climate change. It's on the table for discussion and exploration."

Peter expanded on the need to have more people develop multiple approaches rather than aim for one large solution.

There's a real temptation to think that there's just one way of doing this, that we have to find the perfect way to do it, and then everything will be cool. The problem is that when we're operating in uncertainty, the biggest risk we have is not whether we can execute a program or build a particular piece of technology. It's whether we build the right one. You try to address that by sitting in a room, agreeing, and saying, "Yes, that's it."

"That's very linear and centralized. Our opportunity is to go as broad as we can and do as many things as we can. That addresses the real risk of whether we pick the right one."

"The other thing it addresses is being able to work in parallel. One single big effort is not going to get this done. We need to try all these different things and have everybody do something independently. Otherwise we are at a real risk of picking the wrong technology. We are also quite lucky over big, existential crises that inaction has been okay. After something like Covid, people were saying, "I didn't need to do it because I didn't isolate and everything was okay."

"There's a real trap in thinking that other things will pan out the same way. A way to make sure is that everybody can try new things, especially when we start involving policy and state. They tend to pick three or four focus areas where the real solution is to try as many things as we can and see how it works."

"A good example of this is that I was listening to a team that said, 'We are going to build this thing take carbon through producing biochar. Fantastic stuff. We're going to build one. It's super risky. We build one, we build 250. It's going to be a billion dollar company.'"

"The problem is the planet needs 250,000 of them. So now that sounds totally unachievable to anybody who's rational. The only way we can do that is to have a thousand people trying to do 250 of those, or maybe 10,000 or a hundred thousand people."

Charlette acknowledged the risk of feeling overwhelmed when considering the scale of the task and the excitement of the opportunities available. Realising these opportunities requires significant capital and involves both government and private investment.

"There can be this inertia that there's such a big job ahead of us. It can be quite overwhelming. When you think about climate science and reaching planetary boundaries, we have all of those incredible solutions. What we need to do is unlock capital, flow it towards them, and help them commercially scale particularly in the hardware solutions."

"I know incredible companies - battery tech waste to energy tech that set up their manufacturing plant overseas. Why are we not doing that here? There have been some commitments from the federal government, but they need more support. We have incredible solutions, but half of the investment comes from overseas."

"They've been incentivized to go overseas. Vertus Energy is one of those. Kono is going to set up their plant in the U.S. We should be doing that here. There are some good examples of that starting to happen, like synthetic bio."

"Precision fermentation company Cauldron, set up in Orange, NSW, is making up new ways of producing food and fiber products. They're heading to Mackay because a lot of the transferable skills in the mining engineering sector are applicable to Cauldron. I think Australia has been really shortsighted in shipping and digging for a long time. There is so much value we can create here. You don't need a crystal ball to see where that value is coming from. Europe sees it, the U.S. sees it, and they're taking our best talent away. Let's create the jobs and growth here. I do believe that we have all the solutions we need. We just need them to scale."

"The government has a huge role to play in derisking and crowding in private capital. The latest report from last year was that for every dollar they invest, they crowd in five dollars of private capital. Government has a really strong role to play in helping to derisk, investing early to help them build. I know a lot of hardware technologies that will be game-changing, but they need a hundred million cap-ex for their seed round to get the thing built. It's a lot more capital we're talking about. Government can play a role in derisking that or crowding in the private capital needed."

Philip reiterated the need for multiple approaches while stressing the need to innovate in diversified investment models.

"I ask the question, "Where do startups play a role?" I'm seeing increased sophistication in what we're trying to achieve. A lot of companies are setting targets that are going to be high leverage opportunities for industry such as predictive platforms to make decisions on decarbonization investments within industry."

"Startups are building software opportunities for that, but companies can accelerate transitions we are already on. For example, EV transition, there are lots of startups playing a role in getting chargers across the country as soon as possible. We're trying to have a lot of companies to experiment with new technologies. It's also the reverse, to get industry to start adopting things, stepping into into spaces where these technologies can be developed in close collaboration with the demand side."

"Matching grant arrangements exist on the hypothesis that multiple partners have to step into a project together on semi-commercial terms. Their structure brings a level of market reality into the game."

"At the same time, it shouldn't be the only type of funding available for this kind of decarbonization technology. It excludes opportunities that are capital intensive, where there is a significant nature-based component, or where there is an extremely long R&D lifecycle. New blended finance opportunities will be required. I think that's a priority to see how can leverage the entire capital stack and innovate in new financial opportunities."

"That's what we've seen in the last few years in emerging tokenized economies. Crypto and DAOs, there have been many platforms that have tried to figure out how we mobilize capital to things that in the past were not investible from a VC, debt, or government perspective. One of the opportunities we can explore as an innovation ecosystem is how we build new models to mobilize capital in things that were not investible."

The conversation continued to answer questions from the webinar participants, including the hub's focus areas and approaches to competing tensions of decarbonisation, food production, and housing.

The panel highlighted the size of the challenge and opportunity and the need for multiple and diverse approaches. The conversation also demonstrated Queensland and Australia's amazing leadership and momentum to support technology's contribution to decarbonisation.

Over the next several months, the Queensland Decarboniation Hub's technology theme will map technologies, technology providers, innovation ecosystem enablers, policy drivers, and place-based opportunities. We will highlight specific examples, such as battery technologies and biofuels, through further webinars.

If you want to be involved by contributing to or benefiting from the Hub's efforts, please head over to the Hub's website and reach out, or get in touch directly here through LinkedIn.