TNEP Radio Transcripts

Karlson 'Charlie' Hargroves interviewed on ABC Brisbane 612, 4 July 2008

Michael Smith interviewed by Alexandra de Blas on ABC Radio National's Science Show, 7 June 2008

Michael Smith interviewed by Steve Cannane on Triple J's Hack, 19 March 2006

Michael Smith interviewed by Alexandra de Blas on ABC Radio National's Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue, 18 June 2005

TNEP Executive Director Charlie Hargroves interviewed on the ABC

ABC Brisbane 612 spoke

with TNEP's

Karlson 'Charlie' Hargroves on 4 July 2008 about the Garnaut Climate Change Review Draft Report.

Listen to the interview from the ABC.

TNEP Research Director Michael Smith interviewed on the ABC

Scientists and leaders from business and government met in Canberra in May 2008 to discuss the need for action over climate change. Tim Flannery explains the urgency and suggests a radical solution. Tim Costello says climate change is causing poverty and undoing 50 years of development work in the world's poorest countries. The group discussed the technologies available for saving energy, and the options ahead for reducing carbon output through carbon trading. Alexandra de Blas reports from the forum.

Alexandra de Blas spoke

with TNEP's

Michael Smith on 7 June 2008.

Listen to the interview from the ABC (Michael at 16:58).

The top call to action in the Climate Change chapter is to 'mitigate, mitigate, mitigate' our carbon emissions. And Professor Ian Lowe in the Energy section asks us to accept a 40% cut in our emissions by 2020. And then scale that up to a staggering 95% by 2050. Achieving targets like these seems almost impossible, particularly when you consider the short, five to ten year time-frame Tim Flannery was talking about. But the work of the Natural Edge project makes me feel optimistic. This team of four young engineers with an extraordinary set of global networks has produced a three-part bible on how to reduce your emissions. It's enormous, but don't be put off by the size. It's designed so that you only need to read the chapters that relate to your business. Michael Smith is one of the Natural Edge team.

Michael Smith: Most businesses are still yet to really get going in terms of reducing their greenhouse emissions. Price Waterhouse Coopers did a survey of 300 CEOs in Australia of medium-to-large businesses, and of those over 80% had not done very much at all. And they said that part of the reason for that is that they genuinely didn't know where to start. They didn't know where they could either make the biggest greenhouse emission (reductions) or where the emissions could be most cost-effectively reduced.

Alexandra de Blas: There are three different modules. Give me an overview of how it actually works.

Michael Smith: We've tried to make this as simple and easy to use for everyone in business. So the first module gives the business case for action and helps business to get started. It gives them access to free, online resources to help them do basic energy audits of their business. Then the rest of the first module has step-by-step solutions to help reduce emissions in their buildings but also, if they're in industry, has different information to help them reduce energy use in different (commonly used) technologies.

The second module has been designed to help a busy CEO or a busy person in business just find what they need for their sector, specifically. So if you work in the mining sector, if you work in tourism or fast foods or if you work in food processing, there is a resource for you that has literally A-Z steps of the best, most cost effective ways to reduce your emissions.

Alexandra de Blas: Why did you make it free and open-source?

Michael Smith: Very simply we don't have time to muck around. The latest science from James Hanson published three months ago in the top scientific journals argues that we barely have ten years to avoid the dangerous tipping points on climate change. There is a need, we believe, for every country in the world to create resources like this so that not just Australia, but China, all parts of the world, can rapidly skill up their workforce so that they're ready to seize the cost-effective energy (efficiency) opportunities as fast as possible. This is terribly important, because the faster we can seize and implement energy efficiency opportunities, the more rapidly we can stop needing to build new coal-fired power stations around the world. This is absolutely critical, not just in Australia but particularly in China and India, where they're building new power stations, we're told, every week.

Alexandra de Blas: You've focused on energy efficiency first, and then you go into offsets and that sort of thing. Why have you done it in this order?

Michael Smith: Energy efficiency saves business money. Energy efficiency improves their bottom line. There are some companies around the world where their energy efficiency savings are in the order of $1 to $2 billion per annum after ten years of work on energy efficiency. We're talking about the larger companies here. But even for small companies, the sorts of money they can save through energy efficiency can be roughly the same as their profit margins.

Science Show Archives: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/

TNEP links: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2263755.htm

TNEP Research Director Michael Smith interviewed on Triple J

A parliamentary inquiry here has been looking into the safety of nuclear power plants - they're due to release their report soon. Safety has been the big bugbear of the nuclear industry. Since the accident at the Chernobyl power plant in the old USSR in 1986 - nuclear energy has been seen as a dangerous option. Particularly in an age of increased terrorism. But as we search for alternatives to our current energy sources that emit greenhouse gases; nuclear energy has made a bit of a comeback. Advocates of nuclear argue it's not only safe, but it's clean and green. Guests include Michael Smith from the Natural Edge Project in Canberra and Pepita Maiden who spent four years working for British Nuclear Fuels.

Steve Cannane spoke

with TNEP's

Michael Smith on 19 March 2006.

Listen to the interview from Triple J.

Hack Archives: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/notes/default.htm

TNEP links: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/notes/s1642496.htm

TNEP Research Director Michael Smith interviewed on the ABC

Geraldine Doogue: Now its book recommendation time on Saturday Breakfast and I'm going to tell you about a book called The Natural Advantage of Nations. It's a remarkable book just out about how to develop a sustainable economy and society. It is packed full of local and international innovations and solutions and I'm well advised that it's sure to become a must read for anyone with an interest in the field. It was put together by The Natural Edge Project, it's a young Australian engineering think tank and it recently won a Banksia Award for Environmental Leadership, Education and Training.

Alexandra de Blas spoke

with the book's

co-editor,

Michael Smith on 18 June 2005.

Listen to the interview from the ABC until Saturday the 23rd of July 2006.

Michael Smith: "As the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed; already two thirds of the world's eco-systems are in serious decline, to the point that Kofi Annan said that 'we can no longer assume that the world's life supporting eco-systems will continue indefinitely'. Sustainability therefore is about sustaining the things that matter to us, like the essential life supporting systems, like our judicial systems, like the things that we value, but it's also about achieving genuine progress on those things that need improvement.

To really achieve sustainability will involve innovating to achieve really exciting big changes, like the sort of changes Arnold Schwarzenegger announced two weeks ago where he committed California to 80% reductions in greenhouse emissions, and Bob Carr just this week has committed NSW to achieve 60% greenhouse emissions. It's exciting times. We see sustainability as the key thing that will drive innovations this century".

Alexandra de Blas: I really like the way the book ranges so widely across business, education, government and civil society and it integrates the theory and the practice very well. You've got a lot of Australian examples in the book, were you surprised to find so many cases of sustainable leadership here in this country?

Michael Smith "We weren't surprised on at least half of it because thanks to shows like ABCs Earthbeat, like the Green Olympics, the Sydney Olympics, Australia 's innovation on sustainability, schemes like Landcare have actually been well covered in the media. But what we were surprised to find is that there is a wealth of innovation coming out of CSIRO and our universities. Most people don't realise that Australia spends 23% of our R&D budget on either eco-innovation or better understanding and managing the environment. (And) There's so many stories there that hadn't been told that are now in this book.

The leadership is coming in so many different forms and (if I could just point out for instance) even a profession such as accountancy, that people normally don't see as the vanguard of sustainability, an Australian academic at ANU, Roger Burritt, his environmental management accounting framework, developed with German professors, has been adopted as the model by the International Accountancy Standards Committee that they're recommending globally.

Whilst a lot is already known we found so many other key pieces of puzzle actually already there and already moving that give us great confidence. (These give us great confidence) that Australia, particularly in the Asia Pacific region - where China and India are such exciting countries in terms of the challenge of achieving sustainability - Australia has got such an exciting role to play in the future in our region".

Alexandra de Blas: Talking about the region, you look at some very interesting examples. In Goa , the move to develop a sustainable city in thirty years is a very good one, tell me a bit more about that.

Michael Smith: "The work from the Indian group that submitted for the International Gas Union's Sustainable Cities Competition has been described as some of the most innovative work in years by the leading German sustainability expert Ernst Von Weizacker. The team in India has worked out that it literally is possible, economically, socially, technologically to transform the region of Goa in India to sustainability within thirty years. This is terribly significant. Asia as a whole will have ten of the fifteen largest cities in the world by 2015. Newsweek in October last year said that how Asia does sustainable cities and urbanisation will make or brake the region economically".

Alexandra de Blas: One of the greatest barriers to creating a sustainable future is institutional inertia, if we're going to find new ways to use resources more efficiently and to treat the environment better as we're doing it, we're going to need some radical innovation. Now Paul Weaver talks about some cutting edge work in the Netherlands where they're designing for sustainability, tell me how they're doing it?

Michael Smith: "What was new about the Netherlands work is they realised that to achieve the sort of reductions in energy use, the sort of reductions we need to truly bring global warming under control, to restore our natural environments will involve bigger changes than currently most governments and most R&D programs dare to look at. Because the Netherlands is a very resource dependant country, it imports most of its resources from around the world, it has one of the biggest ecological footprints of any country in the world. Hence from their base line studies they realised they actually had to - to truly be sustainable and live within the planet's limits - achieve what's called a factor 10 or factor 20 gain. This means that they're actually trying to find ways to use their water ten to twenty fold more productively.

Now this isn't unique to the Netherlands, Australia 's CSIRO flagship program's water flagship also has its goal to achieve a ten fold improvement of water productivity. What was new about the Netherlands , back in 1993 when they started this, is it was the first time any nation, having done this study then committed to it. They committed to seeing how they could achieve factor ten to twenty type improvements, that is a factor ten or twenty reduction in the negative environmental load on the planet".

Alexandra de Blas: But I like the way they brought all those different elements of society together and they looked forward fifty years and then they cast back to say 'ok if that's our goal, how are we going to start from here?' Just the way they designed it and the way they formed new partnerships and interactions was really very exciting.

Michael Smith:"Indeed, and we need to do exactly what you've just described, we need a broader approach to innovation, we need to involve new partnerships and we need to back cast as you've described from the future in terms of how - not just over five to ten year time horizons but over fifty year time horizons - how we can redesign our urban water systems, how we can redesign our agriculture systems, how we can redesign the built environment. It is truly a landmark work and we were really excited that Paul Weaver for the first time linked all of that work to how any nation can learn from it and integrate their lessons into any nation's national systems of innovation".

Alexandra de Blas: It's not just a book that you've created, you also have a website and you're producing a number of training modules, some of which are already being trailed with universities, how would you like the training component to take shape?

Michael Smith: "The training component has already taken shape, the first batch of training modules that were funded by the Environmental Engineering Society of Australia have been trialled already in fourteen universities successfully in Australia. The training modules are designed to reach key sectors; business, government, professional bodies and the next generation in universities, in line with the recommendations of UNESCO and the UN for the UN decade of Education in Sustainable Development, that runs from 2005 to 2015".

Alexandra de Blas: Why is it important to target the professions like engineers, architects and accountants?

Michael Smith: "A lot of key decisions in our society are made now by companies. Companies and corporations make up over 50 of the 100 biggest economic entities globally. The boards of those corporations and companies comprise accountants, engineers and other professional people, therefore, we think it's really vital to reach those professions because their members comprise many of the key decision makers in society.

But also there is so much opportunity for those professions to lead. There is now a field of engineering called Whole Systems Design Engineering that shows that on almost anything, including the everyday fridge - we can still improve the everyday fridge's efficiency 50% very simply with the latest innovations coming out of Europe material design. Engineers can be the new green heroes.

Similarly built environment; our built environment, our cities are responsible for 50% of greenhouse emissions. Therefore our architects, urban planners, surveyors, all these professional bodies, that make up the Australian Council of Professionals, all have a key role to play. To date they've been relatively unsung on what they're currently doing and also under-appreciated in what they could do.

But finally I want to emphasize it's this institutional strength we have in Australia in these professional bodies that The Natural Edge Project; Cheryl Paten, Nick Palousis, Charlie Hargroves and myself believe Australia could lead the UN decade of Education in Sustainable Development. We have formal commitments to sustainability from many professional bodies in Australia and these professional bodies accredit university courses. They have huge capacity to supply materials to help universities change their curricula.

Therefore The Natural Edge Project is constructively working with the universities, with these professional bodies, with the school education networks to build a coalition for Australia to really provide a unique model to the world".

Geraldine Doogue: "Michael Smith, a very passionate young man, member of The Natural Edge Project and co-editor of The Natural Advantage of Nations and Alexander de Blas assures me it is a truly inspiring book. You can find links to their particular website at www.abc.net.au/rn, just follow the prompts to Saturday Breakfast and we'll have all the details for you."

Earthbeat Archives: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/default.htm

TNEP links: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/saturday/stories/s1394533.htm