Collaboration and competition key to commercialising cleantech

The road to clean technology is not a smooth one. It requires the spending of time and money to get ideas off the ground, and then a change in attitude in order for other people to implement these ideas. The challenge of overcoming these issues was discussed at the opening panel session of GE Australia’s ‘At Work’ event, held in Sydney from 21-22 August.

GE’s CEO, Steve Sargent, opened the event with the announcement that the company’s $10 million ecomagination Challenge has officially begun. For three months, ending on 30 November, the competition will invite Australian and New Zealand businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students to submit real ideas for low-carbon solutions and technologies. Five winners will be selected in early 2013, receiving $100,000 each to develop their ideas.

Jan Dekker, Manager Director of Cleantech Ventures, noted that funding ventures has been particularly difficult recently due to the GFC, so for GE to provide its support is a great incentive for people to bring forth their ideas.

Following the announcement, the panel discussed the challenges involved in accelerating the cleantech space. When asked which industries are in need of cleantech, the Chief Marketing Officer at GE, Beth Comstock, said: “This idea of efficiency is one of few issues that touches almost every industry”, from aviation to transportation, healthcare to agriculture. Dekker added that cleantech isn’t its own sector - “it’s a theme that applies across a whole range of sectors”.

Unfortunately, this means there is no single cleantech community, which is why the ecomagination Challenge plays an important role in bringing people together to solve problems which are, according to Comstock, too big for anyone to solve on their own. During the first challenge in 2010, almost 100,000 people came together to generate, and in some cases collaborate on, new and innovative ideas.

“The community created opportunities that any one of these technologies might not have had on their own,” Comstock said.

Tony Peacock is someone who knows all about the importance of collaboration, as CEO of CRC Association. But he also knows that results are not immediate, saying it typically takes 11 years for CRC programs to deliver.

“When you get a grant, that’s like a kiss behind the garden shed,” Peacock said. “A cooperative research centre, that’s like a marriage. That’s hard work.”

“If you’re an investor, you have to play a long-term game,” added Comstock.

Of the barriers preventing companies from taking up cleantech, Professor John Thwaites of ClimateWorks Australia said that money isn’t actually an issue, considering the costs that can be saved along with energy (with Comstock noting that ecomagination is about being both ecological and economical). In fact, he said he has completed a low-carbon growth plan for the whole economy and has identified 64 opportunities - one-third of which are profitable.

Thwaites said that of the 14+ problems he identified, the biggest one is habit - companies don’t like change, so new technology has to be somewhat similar to the current technology. He therefore suggested that innovators should focus on the delivery model of their ideas, not just the technology or financing, as this will increase the chance of businesses taking up this idea. Dekker agreed, saying that of the 250-300 companies Cleantech Ventures sees per year, less than 10% of propositions come in a form suitable for review.

But attitudes to cleantech are definitely changing. Dekker said the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU) is surprisingly supportive of the carbon tax and clean technology package, “because they see the bigger picture as an opportunity for manufacturing to move into these advanced, niche areas that they can export around the world”. Peacock added that “technology never puts people out of work” - it simply changes the nature of work.

“Who wants to work in a coal-fired power station if you can work in a hydro or tide power station?” he said. “We’ll always replace those things.”

Thwaites said a clear example of a change in values has occurred with water, with people constantly on the lookout for water-saving products in the last 10 years. He thinks we might have now reached that point with carbon.

“For years our energy use went up and up, and finally in the last three years it’s actually started to come down,” he said. “So now could be at a tipping point on energy where we were on water a decade ago. The classic example for consumers is in solar PV, household PV. Australia is one of the world leaders in household PVs.”

As these opportunities start to present themselves, the creation of cleantech through the ecomagination Challenge becomes all the more important. Thwaites said the challenge’s prize element stimulates competition - not necessarily for the money itself, but for people to be able to say that they’ve won it.

“And also,” said Thwaites, “not only the people that apply, but the broader business communities see that there are organisations that are applying and being applauded for their innovation in cleantech, and that is likely to stimulate them.”

While it’s clear that the world’s carbon problems cannot be solved in one panel session, the points and discussion raised by these four people demonstrate the value of collaboration. The ecomagination Challenge will no doubt allow for this to happen on a much larger scale, generating new ideas and technologies that will help see Australia and New Zealand into a clean future.

For more information on the ecomagination Challenge, visit http://challenge.ecomagination.com/anz.