• UNSW receives $6.3m for renewable energy and decarbonisation research, opens in a new window
• Embodied carbon: what is it and how to reduce it, opens in a new window
• What corporations aren't disclosing about their CO2 emissions, opens in a new window
• Net zero for Australia's built environment is possible by 2040, opens in a new window
• Businesses and directors could face multi-million dollar penalties if they fail to disclose their climate impact, opens in a new window

Voiceover  00:05

Welcome to UNSW’s Engineering the Future podcast, a series where we'll speak to academics and industry leaders who are embracing cutting edge ideas and pushing the boundaries of what is truly possible. In this episode, we'll discuss the challenges of industrial decarbonisation as nations around the world try to meet their pledged targets to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades, we'll hear from leading experts in the field, David Eyre and Shay Chalmers, as they explain how and why Australia is at the forefront of those efforts, but we'll need to foster collaborations and partnerships to achieve net zero by 2050. They'll also provide analysis about new technologies and reveal how technical and economic feasibility is only one part of the puzzle. So join us as we discover how world changing action starts with fearless thinking in Engineering the Future of Decarbonisation.

Neil Martin  01:05

Hello and welcome to Engineering the Future of Decarbonisation. My name is Neil Martin, and I'm a journalist and STEMM communicator working in the Faculty of Engineering at UNSW. Joining me today to discuss what changes we can expect in decarbonisation over the next 30 years is David Eyre, CEO of the UNSW Institute for Industrial Decarbonization. In his current role, David is driving initiatives aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of essential industrial products and services, and has previously led industrial sustainability programs in the areas of renewable energy, water efficiency, supply chain optimization and environmental risk management. He is also a former CEO of the Future Food Systems CRC, where he worked to optimize the nutritional productivity and environmental performance of Australia's food and agribusiness sectors. Hi, David.

David Eyre  02:04

Now Good morning. Neil, pleased to be here.

Neil Martin  02:06

Also with us is Shay Chalmers, an experienced engineering and manufacturing executive. Over the past 15 years, her global career has spanned a wide range of manufacturing environments, from steel to medical devices and a host of different roles, from the shop floor to executive management across private, public and not for profit sectors. Shay is currently the CEO of manufacturing firm GLT, where she leads a team redefining semi trailers through innovative solutions and cutting edge technologies, ensuring a new standard in trailer sustainability and performance. Welcome, Shay,

Shay Chalmers  02:47

Thanks so much for having me.

Neil Martin  02:49

I think most people agree that in an era marked by accelerating climate change, achieving net zero by 2050 stands as an important commitment to safeguarding our planet for future generations, but reducing global carbon emissions to sustainable levels is a massive technical and societal challenge. The task obviously includes the transition to renewable energy, but is also far greater than that, new technologies, supply chain, solutions, standards and skills are essential across every sector of industry, including hard to decarbonise sectors such as construction, manufacturing, civil engineering, mining and those involving industrial chemicals. Even so, the Australian government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to at least 43% below 2005 levels. And is a signatory to the Paris Agreement, where the longer term aim is to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 David, I might start with you with a very direct question, are you confident we will reach Net Zero target by 2050?

David Eyre  04:03

Now, this is a good question. Neil, I think it's important to really see decarbonisation or production in greenhouse gas emissions as a byproduct of an industry transformation process. What I see, really is the next stage in the industrial revolution, and I think Australia has a really important role to play in this. It is really about a lighter form of heavy industry, a smaller footprint for how we produce critical products like steel, ammonia, plastics and cement. So I think we can do it, but it's going to take really deep collaboration across industry, government and universities, and it's why we're working with big companies like BHP and Rio who really understand the complexity of globalized supply chains and the macroeconomics around actually swapping out these fossil fuel based technologies, which work really well, but which have all these unintended consequences.

Neil Martin  04:59

Do you think 2050 is coming a bit too soon down the track?

David Eyre  05:04

I think it really depends on the leadership within our community and the skills of our coming generations, which is, of course, where universities have a huge role to play. We all need to think differently about it. Whether you're a policy maker or a financier or an engineer working within companies. We all have a contribution to make, and Australia is uniquely positioned. I think we have an important global role, because we have two amazing things. We have capability to create abundant, cheap and renewable energy, and we are one of the world's leading suppliers of natural resources. We have the strategic minerals and the critical minerals, we've just got to figure out how to value add them in a sustainable way.

Neil Martin  05:48

Shay, if I asked you the same question, that net zero by 2050 target, do you think that's achievable?

Shay Chalmers  05:56

I'm pretty optimistic, based on all of the activities that we're seeing around the globe, but there is, there is no doubt that it is incredibly complex. We are on the precipice of a global transformation and and our pathway to net zero is a really important part of that. But there's so many technical and social implications and Policy and Government implications of doing this that I think David is well on point when he says collaboration is key here. In order for us to achieve that target, we need to be working together, learning from each other, learning from each other's mistakes, and not doing this in silos and in isolation like we have done a lot in the past. This is not about global competition or even competition between industries. This is about us all learning and growing together so we can meet that target in the next 26 years.

Neil Martin  06:48

What would you say are the biggest challenges that need to be overcome over that next kind of 25 to 30 year period?

Shay Chalmers  06:56

I think the complexity of the challenge is such that there is a plethora of different challenges that we have. So when we're talking about decarbonisation, particularly from an industrial perspective, we need to think of the entire supply chain and the entire value chain. And there's so many different pieces of that puzzle. And as David said, Australia plays a incredibly important part, because we house a lot of the raw materials that go into the pillars of society that we need to focus on how we can decarbonise. David mentioned it. We've got steel, steel and green metals is an incredibly important part of this, cement, plastics, ammonia. There's some really core elements that Australia can play a crucial role in, because of the ability to access the raw materials that we need, and the fact that we have space available to be able to electrify or input sustainable electrical power into those fundamental processes.

David Eyre  07:58

Yeah, I think universities have a really important role to play in looking under the hood of the vision, if you like, the wishful thinking. There's also talk about Australia being a green a clean technology powerhouse, but what universities can do is put together the transdisciplinary teams needed to map out the pathways. Now we're working with economists, engineers, scientists doing techno economic analysis to figure out what actually is the route by which we can create the energy needed to do things like direct reduction in the steel and aluminium process. There's so many moving parts. As Shay has said, it's a transdisciplinary challenge. If you combine the economic expertise with engineering expertise, you can figure out how to get those brilliant new technologies through to market at scale. It's about collaboration.

Shay Chalmers  08:48

I'm very passionate about steel. I spent a number of years working in the steel industry in the US, in a consolidated steel mill, and at GLT we manufacture with metals and all of our steel comes from Australia. And it's pretty optimistic that I saw that between Rio, BHP and BlueScope, they're planning on commissioning their first electric smelting furnace by 2027. Now that kind of stuff is the things that make me optimistic about how we can look at industry, partnering together and partnering with universities to be able to solve the technical challenges. That impact has such a flow on effect throughout the manufacturing industry, those just making that. It's quite a large change, but that change impacts on the entire steel supply chain here in our nation, and enables manufacturers like myself to also reduce our product life carbon footprint as well.

Neil Martin  09:40

I'm going to pick up on something you said there, David, with regards to universities having that important role of having the long term view and to be able to kind of analyze these things, is one of the challenges still, that when you try to translate that into industry, the economics comes into play. Are these industries still looking at their bottom line, or is that changing? I hear a lot sometimes of that the greener options are now becoming the actual cheaper options. So does that help the process?

David Eyre  10:10

Well of course, all companies have to look at their bottom line, and they must, they should, and they do. So that the pathway really involves understanding what I call 'deep decarbonisation' in the context of macroeconomics and macroeconomics and where the world's heading. And there are risks and opportunities in the in the state of a global economy. Now we have massive geopolitical disruption. We have supply chain instability. We have a retreat from globalization. And now we're having carbon border control mechanisms, CPAMs, which are effectively tariffs on high carbon products. So there's risk for Australia there, as well as opportunities. China, for example, is seeking to green its steel industry, which means the relatively low grade Australian iron ore is possibly less attractive to import than they are currently. Now that means we really need to look at beneficiation of magnetite in Australia so we can supply a higher grade of iron ore if we are exporting a semi finished product. So there's real complexity in how you manage the economics around a supply chain for a product like pig iron or steel. And you've got to think ahead to the shifts in the global economy which create opportunities for sovereign capability in Australia, like onshoring heavy industry or small front print green heavy industry, and how that affects our balance of trade. Shay was talking about the complexity of supply chains. We've cracked a chemistry of geopolymer cements, low carbon cements, and we can make the stuff. It performs well, but getting it into the market at scale requires new building codes. The buildings have to be insurable. You've got the people who are upcycling the feedstocks to create the cement. Then you've got to train the people who are mixing aggregates, creating concrete. So before you're a building company, I mean, we work with big companies like Lendlease, before you can use a geopolymer cement on your site, you have to know it's going to perform correctly. You can insure the building and it's compliant with codes. So this is why I'm saying it's a transdisciplinary challenge. We have to bring law, business, finance into the mix. No, not just our scientists and our engineers. We all have to pull together.

Shay Chalmers  12:23

And there's a big policy play and a regulatory play in that too, I think, and that's the challenges that we have. We're trying to balance the economics of transitioning, looking at the technical viability of it at the same time as trying to work in with our regulators. I think from it's similar in the transport industry, which the transport industry in Australia, contributes 20% of our emissions, and by 2030 they're expecting it to be the largest contributor. So when we're looking at electrification in the areas of transport or how we can decarbonise, there's a quite complex regulatory framework that we need to make our way through before we can get to the other side. So when we're trialling new technologies, it's not just about the technical and the economic feasibility, but it's also the legal and regulatory feasibility and making sure that our policy makers and our regulatory frameworks are keeping up with the technical transition as well, which adds another degree of complexity to an already very complex problem.

David Eyre  13:22

I think it'd be great to mention Shay's company GLT trailers, because you're making energy efficient light aluminium trailers for the biggest haulage companies in Australia, for people who are moving agricultural and mining materials around. And as part of that, you're helping your clients understand route optimization, the energy efficiency implications of the choices they make with your trailers. So I mean, you're an engineer, you're a young leader, and you're leading a very successful, small Australian manufacturing SME, the kind of company that we'd love to hear about in Australia.

Neil Martin  13:55

Awesome job.

David Eyre  13:55

It's an awesome job.

Shay Chalmers  13:56

Oh, thank you. I think what's been really interesting, our value proposition in the past has been about our innovative designs to reduce weight so our customers can transport more product, which is a good commercial ROI for them. But the great thing about that because they're using less fuel, or they're able to do less loads because they can fit more volume, we've found that there's a direct correlation with our customers carbon footprint. So it's been really interesting. The value proposition that we've set up around this is how much we can save you in diesel has actually we've been able to put together similar return on investment spreadsheets to say this is what it's actually saving you from a carbon perspective. So it's quite interesting to look at efficient transport, whether it be through efficient routes, or good regulation around how we can transport our goods on certain roads and bridges, or good design in the product and electrification of the trailers and the prime movers, they all kind of come together, because the more efficiently we can do things, the less carbon intensive it is. And I think if you cut it down to its absolute basics. If we can be more efficient in what we do, we use less energy to move things, make things whatever it might be. If we can be more efficient, we're going to contribute less carbon. And I think as manufacturers, from a simplistic perspective, if we look at it through that lens, even as consumers in society, if you use less and you're more efficient at what you do, you're going to be contributing positively to our pathway to decarbonization.

 

Neil Martin  15:21

Do you think that those efficiency savings are the main driver, or is it some more big technological advances that are needed? I maybe want to talk about these four pillars of civilization, industrial society that you talked about, cement, steel, plastic and ammonia, they seem to be quite fundamental. And does there need to be some big change that's going to be the main thing that gets us closer to that net zero?

David Eyre  15:55

It's so important we all understand the fundamental importance of those pillars. There's no way we can support a global population north of 8 billion and to enable the developing world to achieve Western standards of living without increasing massively, increasing production in primary products like ammonia, plastic, steel and cement. Those are masthead products. But of course, in those categories, there are other essential products now, currently the technologies we use to produce those products are all emissions intensive. They rely on fossil fuel energy and fossil inputs. Plastics, for example, use petrochemical feedstocks. We're doing research to replace those petrochemical feedstocks and plastics. So it is all interconnected in fundamental ways. There's a technology convergence, there's a policy convergence around this. And so I'd like to come back to the regional development policy issue, because it's wonderful to see in Australia, this trend towards the creation of well thought out industrial hubs, which is where we can co locate mining, processing, hydrogen factories, ammonia factories for fertilizer for industrial chemicals, manufacturing companies like Shay's, if you put companies together in a well thought out way in particular locations, you get massive improvements in the efficiency of transport and energy infrastructure.

Shay Chalmers  17:17

And you can utilize byproducts too.

David Eyre  17:20

Exactly.

Shay Chalmers  17:20

Historically, we've always thought about industry in silos and technology in silos, but what we're seeing with the-with our pathway to decarbonization is there's so many byproducts that are a feedstock for something else, or when we're producing hydrogen, we get excess water. So maybe, what can we do with that water to feed somebody else? Or there's, there's so many inputs and outputs, and it really requires a systems thinking. And I love the concepts of hubs and clusters, and thinking about inputs and outputs of different industries and different companies and seeing how we can work together. There's a lot of examples of that going on around the nation.

David Eyre  17:57

Yeah, and Australia is actually pretty good at systems thinking. You know, we've made a massive global contribution to sustainable water management, sustainable management of soil, sustainable management of biodiversity, and I know we're starting to translate that kind of mentality to how we design our cities and our regions, how we think about things like transport and energy infrastructure. So it's so vitally important that we accelerate the evolution of government policy in this space, because you really do need high end analytics and modeling to figure out where to put these hubs and why put a hub in a particular location. There are regions in Australia that are ideally suited for particular sorts of hubs. We need to focus for government investment and the policy support on those specific locations, and to really design them from the viewpoint of the needs of industry, rather than to respond to some political driver like low unemployment or something like that.

Neil Martin  18:52

Can I ask you about those four pillars? Is there one in particular that you think is a big focus, or more in general, what are the big challenges with each and all of those? In terms of decarbonisation, as David said, I think he mentioned, cement would be the third highest emitter if it was a country. So there's obviously a big problem there that needs to be solved somehow.

David Eyre  19:17

One of our focus sectors is the built environment and our future cities and building and construction consumes a massive amount of high carbon materials. Cement is an essential one. Steel, of course, structural steel is absolutely vital to our buildings. And then there's innovation around other materials that can reduce the carbon footprint, but you need to put that together in sustainable designs, which is why our built environment and architectural schools work closely with our civil engineering schools, and you really need to think about their supply chain for those inputs and as much as possible to onshore the creation of those inputs. But then there are very interesting interactions with our trade partners. There's a trend in building and construction to modularise and to digitize the design and implementation of construction processes. In other words, you have a digital analog of all the components you might use in a small building, a medium scale building, or even a very large building, and that means you can model and simulate that structure before you actually turn sod. And then that strips massive amounts of unnecessary transport and energy usage out of the system. You can do it much more efficiently, but to do that, you've got to have a very efficient way of manufacturing those components. So Australia is probably never going to have factories highly automized, gigantic modern factories like they used to create cars in places like Japan. But what we can do is have partnerships with countries that produce the components for things like these modularized building systems. So I'm talking about the evolution of globalized trade systems. Australia can really help influence the granularity of how we redesign the creation of the components that society needs.

Shay Chalmers  20:59

And I think what David was touching on too is that as Australia, we are a small nation. We do have a large land mass, which creates significant opportunity for us in energy generation, particularly green energy generation, as we move forward. But I think we need to be careful with what we do and prioritize what we focus on. And for us to be successful as a nation, we need to really agree on what our focus is, and all kind of be heading in that same direction. It's that moonshot approach. I know that we have the ability to do it, but we need focus. And the risk is that I see that we're going to scatter our efforts too thin and be masters of nothing, and why David and I are so passionate about those four pillars of society is that they effectively feed into everything. And so we might not focus on decarbonizing all of them within Australia, but we should be having a key part of that value chain. Ammonia feeds into our fertilizers, which feeds into our entire ability to feed ourselves as a nation and export that. Cement and steel feed into everything that we need to construct or move around. Polymers play an incredibly important part as well. So it's really about thinking, what are the priority elements for us as a society? Where do we want to focus our efforts on decarbonisation, and how can we be a world leader and share that knowledge with others as well, and rather than tackling some of the smaller nuances within industry, I think starting at that foundation where our raw materials are, that input into all the different aspects of society is where we can win.

Neil Martin  22:39

So where do you think that focus comes from. I think it's a great point. I just wonder who's involved in that. What is the actual process that you would ideally hope would be happening?

Shay Chalmers  22:51

I think it's it's a really important question about where does that focus come from? And what I'm seeing now is that there's some fundamental policy or commitments at both federal and state levels that are actually causing industry to move in certain directions. But it feels to me, and this is a personal opinion, but it actually does feel to me that our large industry players are the ones leading this in conjunction with the universities.

David Eyre  23:16

Absolutely right.

Shay Chalmers  23:17

And I feel like that's not the right thing. We need that direction and support from government to be able to say, this is what we're going to this is what we're going to invest in. This is what we're going to support. Because, you know, some of that complex macroeconomics that goes into clustering, it's not just about one business or one university. It's about all of us, collectively, and government plays a really strong role in the glue that brings us all together. And I feel like there could be more specific targets and goals and direction and focus from our federal government to support us on this journey.

David Eyre  23:53

I've got a nuance than that. I think it is already being focused and it's heading in the right direction.

Shay Chalmers  23:59

Yeah, great.

David Eyre  24:00

The government is focused on on heavy industry, green heavy industry. They're investing significantly in green steel, green aluminium and hydrogen.

Shay Chalmers  24:09

Yes.

David Eyre  24:10

Where I think we're not quite nailing it yet is around energy. The Australian steel industry uses about, and it's a relatively small industry, already uses about 8% of Australia's energy, right? So if we want to scale up these green industries, we need to supply massively more cheap renewable energy,

Shay Chalmers  24:35

And that cuts across all of those pillars, whether it be steel, ammonia, aluminium, they all require energy.

David Eyre  24:41

But they require it. And so that the coal issue is really tricky. I mean, coal is one of our biggest exports, and we also rely on coal to create a lot of energy we're currently using in industry. And of course, we're importing massive amounts of oil, liquid fuels, so we've talked about finished products. Like steel, but we also need to talk about renewable energy, and particularly hydrogen, which is integral to direct reduction of metals, is and it can also be used as an alternative fuel. So it's a matter of putting all this together, and if you look at the pattern of investment in grants and research, and where state and the Commonwealth are looking at creating humps, but they are zero--starting to zero in on things like production of hydrogen, extending solar-distributed networks, distributed generation. But there's also pushback against that from various lobbies. So when Shay says maybe big industry is controlling it too much, I think certain areas of industry do need to drive it, because they absolutely understand the global economy. Other areas, for example, coal producers maybe have a bit more influence than they should. Now, it's not our role to get into the politics of that, but I think all Australians need to understand that if we want to be a green economy, we need to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. We need to figure out where we're going to put the new generation and how we locate that new generation co located with these new industrial hubs, and we urgently need to plan that in a spatial sense and economic sense and a political sense.

Shay Chalmers  26:20

And incorporate the social aspects too, because when we're looking at these hubs, there is a huge social impact and the change that we're seeing around when we're looking at hydrogen generation and how we set up our solar farms and our wind farms and generate the scale of renewable energy that we need to, it takes a lot of space, and it's one of the reasons why Australia is so well placed. But with that comes understanding of making sure we're not sacrificing good farming land, for instance, or that we're placing them in co-locating them in areas that make sense to both society and we're minimizing any social impact associated with it too.

Neil Martin  27:05

So it sounds like we've identified where those big issues and the big problems are coming from. I might put you in a fantasy scenario where you know you're in charge of one of these areas, or all of these areas, and you've got a big magic wand that you can wave and come up with the solution, Shay, what would what would be the first thing that you would change, and kind of, how would you do it? And I might premise that as well, I'll give you kind of unlimited funds, because I presume that some of these things cost a lot of money, and that might be one of the barriers. But if everything was on the table and nothing was impossible. What would be the first thing that you might change or solve?

Shay Chalmers  27:45

The first thing that I would do is to create a goal. I honestly think that there is so much power in the leaders of our nation, both from government, academia and industry, saying we are going to be the world's best at 'X', and it could be green steel, it could be green ammonia, it could be green cement or green polymers, or it could be in industrial hubs, whatever it is, I think we need to actually set ourselves a target so that we can all align behind it. And from that, I know it seems simple, but there's a beauty that comes with setting a goal. And as Australians, we love hard goals, and we would align behind it, but it feels like we're investing in so many different things, and there's just not a clear direction as a nation as to what we want to head towards. So

Neil Martin  28:39

You're slightly wary of spreading ourselves too thin at the moment.

Shay Chalmers  28:43

I think so like you know, there's nuances to that, because it is a complex problem, and we need to look at all the different aspects of the problem. But I do think that a bit of specificity around what we want to do and what we want to be best at would actually support us all, whether it be within industry, academia or government.

Neil Martin  29:06

Sounds like you're trying to tap into the Australian psyche of, you know, being the best and winning the competition.

Shay Chalmers  29:12

100%. Doesn't that get everybody kind of rallied around it. I know it seems simple, but it works.

Neil Martin  29:19

They maybe need to make an Olympics for decarbonisation, David, and then all the Australians would get on board and be cheering the green and gold.

David Eyre  29:27

Yeah it's a tricky challenge, isn't it? I think we have a communication problem around decarbonisation, and in some ways, the term net zero is a bit of a distractor. As I said earlier, I think decarbonization, or reducing greenhouse emissions is just a byproduct of doing industry better, and that's really fundamentally about Australia's competitive position on the planet, and also how we contribute to the planet. And so if I were in charge of a large budget, I'd be I'd be making television media explainers to the whole Australian population about how those pillars work, how you actually create, how important these products are, how they're created, and where Australia can play. And we do need to play to our strengths. And as I mentioned, our strengths are the ability to produce cheap renewable energy and the fact we have this treasure of natural resources, mineral resources, and also food resources. By the way, that's another story. So like Shay says, We have to have a focus. I believe a focus should be on lighter versions of heavy industry, not on manufacturing. There are niches of manufacturing where we can certainly play, and Shay is a great example of that. For decades, we invested in car manufacture. But it wasn't really Australia's place, our place is value adding our natural resources and figuring out how to do that sustainably. So you put renewable energy together with the emerging technologies for things like direct reduction, which is where hydrogen plays, we start really thinking differently about how we create and export energy and how we import energy. I think that's absolutely vital.

Shay Chalmers  31:02

I love that on the awareness, David, I just think you've hit the nail on the head. Because if we're not aware and we don't understand and we're not explaining that across the population, I think that's a really, really fundamental idea, because that's one of the challenges that we have with every new project or new technology or new development, is that social understanding and education piece of why this is important, why we need it. What are the implications if we don't do it? And I think you hit the nail on the head, we don't understand.

Neil Martin  31:31

And I absolutely agree with both of you, in terms of informing and educating the public, that's part of what this whole podcast is aimed to do, but maybe playing devil's advocate as well...Education is one thing, but when we're talking about these big societal changes and industrial changes, do you think that the public might hear those messages and say, "No, I think they're all important. But me as an individual, I can't reduce the carbonization of the cement industry or the steel industry."

David Eyre  32:03

I think a lot of pressure is put on consumers to solve the problems of the planet. You know, we're told to recycle, we're told to buy electric vehicles and so on. And it is a bit of a cop out, really. The challenge is with industry. But how does that connect to individuals? We all work for companies in one way or another, right? We're all within the system. We're not just recipients of what the system produces. So I guess the key thing, and that's why education is so important, is that when people, particularly people learning technical skills and professional skills are at uni, they can start thinking in a more systems way. They can increase their awareness of these emerging greener technologies, and that then becomes part of their high wage future. Now we do need to transition to being a knowledge economy, and it's been on the agenda of the whole of my career. We talk about this being the clever country. Well, the way we're going to get to be the clever country is, in my view, via clean technology. And I think we need to think about jobs differently. I mean, most Australian jobs right now are service jobs, but there are whole new categories of jobs that can be created in this area of sustainable development and the green economy. There's a lot of wishful thinking there, but making it real is really within...it starts with the universities, and it starts with the way governments fund universities. And back to that communication problem I mentioned before. It just applies just as much within universities. Specialization is so extreme these days that most academics are so deep down in their particular area that they don't really know much about how other things work, and often are quite out of touch with what industry R&D is doing. So part of our job is helping the researchers and the educators stay up to date with what is actually occurring in industry, and that's why you understand we strive so hard to work closely with the companies that are shaping the future, because it really is the companies that shape the future. Governments can only do so much.

Shay Chalmers  32:26

I think back to your point, Neil, about consumers and saying, "Well, how much can I do as a single person?" I think that's a dangerous game. To be honest. I really think that even though we are one person, each day, we can make decisions that impact on so many different things and I think that it's actually really important that we're all connected as a part of this journey, and we all have a purpose in it. I mean, ultimately, humans were always purpose-driven individuals, and I think that we need to do better to connect the consumers into this problem. I've spent a lot of time in my career supporting local manufacturing, and I think you know, with every dollar that you spend, you can choose how that dollar goes and where that dollar goes, and that actually does have a significant impact to our society and how our economy functions. Your choices on a daily basis with what you buy and how you use your energy and how you design your life to be efficient, actually does have a meaningful impact on the on the whole system thinking of it.

Shay Chalmers  34:07

I think that's a valid point. Do you think that that kind of personal empowerment, or maybe even personal pressure on industries to change has improved, whereby people are more aware of the things that they're doing that do have an impact, and the societal change that they can empower as well?

Shay Chalmers  35:31

100% but I think they're demanding it. If we look at the change in demographic, in society, and how as a younger generation are coming through that they are demanding it. They want to understand that purpose. They want to understand how they're contributing more, and so the more time we have to spend as industry leaders, explaining to our workforce why we do what we do, and why it's so important, and how the decisions that they make every hour of every day actually impact on the broader outcomes of the business and society. I find in industry, we're spending so much more time discussing that because our workforce is demanding it. They want to know how we're contributing to a better future for them and their children.

Neil Martin  36:17

There seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg situation going on with a lot of these things which, which comes first. Once you get the ball rolling, you know, maybe it just carries on and you will get the solution. But nobody's having that focus, and nobody's setting the ball in motion and pushing it forward.

Shay Chalmers  36:34

I wouldn't say that nobody's having that focus, because there are some really positive pockets in different industry or different regional areas that there is some positivity of what's going on. I think that it's just not without risk. Commercially, we've always looked at investment from a business perspective based on a plethora of risk, you know, economic or technical or delivery risk, or whatever it might be, and the same rules just don't apply to these large scale decarbonisation projects, because we don't have enough information and inputs to be able to do the analysis. So what I've seen a lot of examples are of people that know there's a whole bunch of different levers, and it's a complex project, but they've got to make some assumptions that this particular technical challenge, although we have not solved it yet. We're going to assume that by the time we get to five years, when we're ready for it, we are going to have solved that challenge, whereas historically, we wouldn't have made those decisions if the technical solution wasn't there. We're not going to go ahead with the delivery of the electrical generation plant to be able to deliver--It's just in different way of us in industry looking at risk management and making some assumptions about understanding that we don't have all the answers, but we've got to go forward anyway.

Neil Martin  37:48

David, did you want to mention anything about that as well?

David Eyre  37:50

Yeah. Look, there are complex sequencing issues around things like capital cycles and planning approval processes and you name it. It really requires deep alignment, so deep decarbonisation. And then there are mandates for government establishes. Right now, all companies emitting above a certain amount are mandated to reduce their scope. One emissions for direct emissions, but the majority of emissions actually are outside their direct control. They're in the supply chain. So a really practical step is developing partnership projects across supply chains where you can demonstrate more carbon efficient or industrially efficient ways of creating these critical products, like cement, for example. So we're working with cement makers, building companies, upcyclers and inputs, and the people are working on the building codes and peak industry bodies working in that space to try and demonstrate a way of getting low carbon cements to market or low carbon steel to market, and at the same time figuring out how you're going to design buildings which can use those components. So it's really you've got to show people that it works. You've got to prove that it works. It's not just talking about it, and that's where the deep piece comes in.

Shay Chalmers  39:04

And that's where I think your institute, David, the Institute of Industrial Decarbonization, is is critical for bringing all that together. When you're looking at the entire life cycle of a product, or the entire value chain of a particular element, there's so many complex parts and so many variables and interdependencies within it that having institutes where industry, government, policy makers and academia can come together to find the solutions to these problems is so important.

Neil Martin  39:33

It definitely sounds like this is a journey that everybody is on and everyone has to be involved with. Shay, you mentioned just before about young people and the change in kind of their mindset. Just to finish off, I might ask you, if you were a 16 or 17 year old today, thinking of going into a career that had some aspect to do with decarbonization, what would you be most excited about?

Shay Chalmers  40:01

The opportunities to create something new. I really honestly think it's such an exciting time for our society, and particularly for engineers. My son decided to study engineering. He's just in first year. But the thing that attracted him to it was that, essentially, they said that if you get into engineering now, you're going to be solving problems that we don't even know exist, and they're across all elements of society and all parts of our economy. We've got so many challenges ahead, it's a pretty exciting time to be entering engineering.

Neil Martin  40:37

So you really are passing on the baton as well.

Shay Chalmers  40:40

Trying my best.

Neil Martin  40:41

David, if you were a young high school student, what would you be most excited about?

David Eyre  40:48

I think it's the convergence of technologies that's occurring. It's--I reckon it's the most exciting time to be alive right now. It's dangerous time to be alive, but it's also very exciting. I think the critical convergence is between digital technologies and AI and other branches of science and engineering. Then when we start applying Big Data and AI to solving some of these really complex problems, we might see a step change in progress, and that's one of the areas we're working very much in. I mean, engineering is a huge field. There are so many branches, civil, chemical, computer science, we're the largest engineering university in Australia, and for students coming into that pipeline, learning to think about the whole system, not just their particular discipline, so that when they go out to work for a company, they're really going to need to be able to deploy all these technologies, particularly digital technologies, that's transformative, and then you have automation. And I think one of the big threats in Australia is that we politically worry about what kind of jobs people are going to have in future, and particularly that automation is going to take jobs away from people. It doesn't have to be that way. And really deep thinking needs to occur around what the future employment pathways are going to be for our young people, so that it's going to be rewarding and emotionally fulfilling, not just financially fulfilling. So I think people in universities, but also people in government and our secondary school systems, that's such an important role to play in shaping this future, and one which is uniquely Australian. We, as I said, we have this role to play, and it's around natural resources and renewable energy.

Neil Martin  42:29

Yeah, absolutely right, David, that engineering covers a lot of topics, and we've covered quite a lot of topics in some of our other podcast episodes, which I'm sure people would like to hear if they haven't already, but this has been a really fascinating discussion, specifically about decarbonisation. David Eyre, many thanks for making the time to join us.

David Eyre  42:50

Thank you, Neil. It's been a real pleasure,

Neil Martin  42:52

and thanks also to Shay Chalmers, it's been a pleasure to chat.

Shay Chalmers  42:56

Thanks for having me.

Neil Martin  42:57

Unfortunately, that's all we've got time for. Thank you for listening. I've been Neil Martin, and I hope you'll join me again soon for the next episode in our Engineering the Future series.

Voiceover  43:10

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