Towards a Brainpower Superpower for the Net Zero Transition

Australia’s journey towards net zero requires not just technological advancements but a transformation of how we approach education and research, as crucial pillars of the knowledge generation. It's the innovation our future relies on. By turning Australia into a brainpower superpower for the net zero transition, we can position education as a cornerstone of both national progress and global leadership.

As emphasised in Swinburne’s 2024 Chancellor’s Oration, this net zero journey offers a profound opportunity for the university sector to lead: not merely in adapting to inevitable change, but in shaping this change and propelling its momentum; and in going beyond technology and traditional engineering solutions, to embrace and mobilise a holistic societal transformation that will reshape our industries, our communities and our ways of life.

To expand on this proposition, Oration Night featured a panel of four thought-leaders and leading practitioners from the interconnected fields of sustainability, energy and net zero, bringing with them diverse strategic experience spanning industry, corporate, public service, advisory, advocacy and activism. The panellists, whose voices have carried through to this essay, explored the opportunities, challenges and barriers that confront Australia and the world. The key question posed to the expert panel was this: 

Given the urgency and scale of change needed, what must proactive leaders across all sectors do differently to shape the markets and the policies that will define our future?

This provocation applies to universities, and their leaders, just as it applies to leaders across business, government, civil society and communities everywhere. As the Oration Address argued, for universities, at least, the task is clear. That we must take an active role in accelerating the pace of change, that this is not a time for passive observation or half measures, and that the education sector needs to adopt the same urgency that we expect from governments and from businesses.

The 2024 Chancellor’s Oration was moderated by esteemed journalist Beverley O’Connor, and featured a panel of distinguished global experts.

Education: Our Renewable Resource

Education must now take centre stage in Australia’s sustainability efforts, highlighting its strategic importance in the net zero transition. Education is Australia’s only major export that doesn’t extract from the land or deplete natural resources. Unlike coal, iron ore, or natural gas, education is a renewable resource—one that expands and self-regenerates through its practice, and that grows exponentially with investment. It grows minds and skills, and it is critical that we recognise this as a national strength. 

We already have strong foundations to build on. Consider the powerful case study of Australia’s leading and ongoing contribution to the development and global proliferation of solar photovoltaic technologies to generate clean electricity, an energy transformation that The Economist recently hailed as the “Solar Dawn”1. This solar-led shift is based overwhelmingly on research-driven innovation and knowledge sharing that occurred in Australian universities over recent decades, especially the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the Australian National University (ANU).

At Swinburne, we see the future of universities as one that embraces sustainability leadership, but we also see challenges to assuming this role. As with many established institutions, the university sector is facing scrutiny. Our role in society is under question. How we respond to the pressing needs of the 21st century - climate change, economic transformation, social equity, and the restoration of nature - will determine whether we demonstrate relevance, depth and strength in our societal purpose, and restore our social licence to operate and thrive.

Business Leadership in a Time of Transition

In the context of business and markets, the 2024 Oration panel addressed the necessity for a bold, broad-based agenda to position corporate sustainability as “competitive advantage”, rather than framing it as an ethical responsibility, or reporting on it voluntarily as “ESG” (environment, social and governance). Incremental changes are no longer enough. As international sustainability author, advisor and guru Paul Gilding pointed out, “we’ve been relying on incremental changes when what we need are systemic shifts that align profitability with sustainability”; and we’ve been treating sustainability as a “nice to have” rather than a business imperative. 

Gilding, who recently co-authored an important paper from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership2, sees rapid socio-economic transformation driven by a combined climate and nature crisis as both imminent and inevitable, saying: “It's mind-boggling how fast it will now move as a result of the technology meeting the economic opportunity, meeting the imperative for change. So it's going to happen and it's going to happen really, really quickly. The only question is where do we, you, us, sit in that process as a country, as a company, as a university?”

In their modern manifestations, whether public or private, universities have to be effective as businesses as well as educational institutions. Universities cannot simply wait for others to lead. Nor, as Gilding warned, can we risk becoming “victims” of inevitable change that we failed to recognise or respond to appropriately. His message was clear, leadership is not a choice, or merely the responsible thing to do, it’s a must do, at speed and scale that reflect a World War II level of global mobilisation.

Universities can’t do this on our own. We can only play our vital leadership role in delivering the net zero transition if the whole system is working with us - governments, communities, businesses - and it’s research and education that underpins it all.

Governments Must Seek Competitive Advantage

London-based Julian Critchlow, a top corporate advisor with Bain & Company and former senior UK civil servant in the energy transition space, reinforced and extended this call for leadership to the government level, referencing the “green industrial revolution”. He shared how early, decisive investments in decarbonisation technologies, especially under former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, positioned the UK to reap long-term economic benefits. His advice for Australia was to move quickly, formulate comprehensive economy-wide strategies, and invest in the net zero transition now to lead rather than react.

Critchlow, who knows Australia well, highlighted how “at risk” the UK economy, traditional industries and jobs are from net zero transformation, and also how much better placed Australia is by comparison. He says the UK political decision-making went like this: “But we're only 1% of global emissions, and if the other 99% moves, we don't have a choice. We're going to have to follow. And if we follow, then we don't create value, we lose jobs. And so the positioning was, it's all about jobs. Go for the jobs in the new economy. And we have to think very strategically where the UK might be able to win and we have many less choices than maybe Australia does with your excellent set of resources, you have many more choices facing you as to how you could capture those jobs.”

Paul Gilding picked up on Critchlow’s analysis, making the obvious connection between corporate leadership and its country equivalent, saying: “If you think you're losing competitiveness as a country or as a company, you're more inclined to act … most companies and most market participants are very big losers from the lack of action on climate change and sustainability. Most countries that don't act, to your point, are very big losers if they don't act. And so then you put that together and say, ‘Why isn’t the government acting?’ The answer is because most companies are fighting against governments acting.”

Clearly creating greater alignment between corporate and government leadership, framed by financial and economic competitive advantage, such as protecting and creating jobs, is critical to driving action at the speed and scale required for real transformation. In the Australian example, the role of universities, as frequent collaborators with both government and industry/business, and also having deep connections into communities, is highly strategic. 

Collaboration Across Sectors With Communities

A holistic approach is vital. Achieving net zero is not just about energy. It’s about everything that matters across transport, food systems, infrastructure, mining and industry, and health and social well-being. The net zero transition, broadly defined, demands a coordinated effort across governments, businesses, civil society and academia. And while Australia may be rich in natural resources, and energy options, it is our intellectual capital - our brain power - that holds the greatest promise for global leadership.

Quite deliberately, the theme for the Oration panel spoke to the importance of “synergies between industries and communities” in accelerating an economy-wide net zero transition. We can’t succeed if the sustainability leadership agenda is framed too narrowly, and nor if it is confined to business and markets, governments and the public sector, and the so-called “ivory towers” of academia. We have to bring people, as community members and consumers and voters, into the equation. We all have to come together in support of the transition. This is a systemic challenge that requires collaborative action across sectors, with each bringing different strengths to the table.

This was echoed by panellist Nicky Sparshott, the Australian-based Global Head of Transformation for food and consumer goods transnational Unilever, who acknowledged how corporations “tend to be quite siloed in the way that we try to solve big systemic problems”. Sparshott emphasised the importance of holistic, integrated solutions, warning of the unintended consequences of working in isolation. Her recommendation was for universities, businesses, and governments to share knowledge and collaborate, particularly in the early pre-competitive stages of systemic solutions, to ensure that we “raise the floor and the ceiling” for everyone involved.

Sparshott pointed to the very human nature of the transformation challenge, which underscores how the role for universities extends beyond technology and engineering to social sciences and the humanities, saying: “In fact this is a very human problem that we're dealing with. It's not a

technical problem with very linear solutions, and we just need to get on with it. It's actually a very adaptive problem that at its core is human beings - be that in our homes, in the communities we're part of, and the organisations that we're in, right up to the nation - who are fundamentally struggling with making the requisite changes.”

The leadership that universities must provide is not just about solving technical problems; it’s about navigating human resistance to change. The path to net zero is as much a social challenge as it is a technological one, requiring deep collaboration across all levels of society.

The Transformative Power of Consumers

Consumers and their spending choices are crucial to net zero. Dan Cass, co-founder and executive director of Rewiring Australia, brought a consumer advocacy perspective to the ranks of the Oration panel. A long-term renewable energy campaigner and rooftop solar champion, Cass cited a very real example of how academic expertise is being put to work for the net zero transition. Inspired by the Higher Education Contribution Scheme, or HECS, now known as HECS-HELP, Rewiring Australia has developed a major proposal aimed at the Australian Government to help households to electrify by underwriting the upfront costs of replacing gas appliances, and investing in solar panels, home batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Building on what he calls Australia’s “rooftop solar miracle”, Cass sees a global leadership opportunity based on “40% of our population living under a clean energy power station already”. Beyond the technological innovation that has enabled consumer solar, much of which was led by Australian universities, Cass proposed that a lot more can be done by universities around “social system integration, economics, customer supply chain, things that are at the border between social science and a bit of economics”,  because that's where we could “really lead the world and electrify”. 

Rewiring Australia is taking its vision for a HECS for home electrification to the highest levels of government, leveraging Australia’s global leadership on solar homes, with Cass saying: “This is what we've pitched to the Prime Minister and the Ministers. What if within a few years, and this would be possible, half of them had a battery? Well, there's your solution for the winter doldrums. What if three-quarters of them ditched gas? You can get to an ambitious climate target if everyone gets off gas in the residential sector, and the punchline is they'll be saving money, and the political punchline is they're voters.”  

As Cass identified, there’s vast potential for university researchers, with a wealth of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary capabilities, to help make the transformation happen suburb by suburb, place by place, across Australia. Education and research are the soft power that can drive not only Australia’s own transition, from our homes up, but also help lead the world through this global transformation. 

Universities like Swinburne are already making strides in fields like decarbonisation and electrification, sustainable manufacturing, hydrogen innovation, and space exploration. The success of initiatives such as the French-Australian Centre for Energy Transition and the Victorian Hydrogen Hub demonstrates that we are not starting from scratch. But there is more to do, and we need to do it at a faster pace and on a larger scale.

From Enabler to Leader

Historically, the education sector has been seen mainly as an enabler of the economy, supporting innovation in other fields, and underpinning workforce capabilities and productivity. More recently, we’ve also come to be seen as an export revenue-earning sector, but mainly only as an extension of Australia’s immigration policy, rather than as a leading source of brainpower-fuelled growth in the emerging net zero economy.  

But the Oration underscored a crucial point: we cannot be content with merely enabling this or that change, or supporting incrementalism, or augmenting immigration priorities. We must lead with our own agenda for transformational change. Universities must move beyond supporting and refining change, to overtly designing and driving it, not just in technology and science, but in societal norms, values, and systems of operation.

Paul Gilding urged institutions to embrace this leadership role, highlighting that “the technology and ideas are there, but what’s missing is the leadership to drive the transformation at scale”. He painted a stark picture of what the world faces, in the absence of real action, saying: “When things are unsustainable, they stop. Now it's not a ‘nice to have’, it's not like if we don't do it, we'll get in trouble and things will be a little bit more difficult. It's gonna stop. And what stops is the global economy. I don't mean we all die overnight and we're all dead and nothing to eat, although for some people that will be the case. What I mean is that the growth stops, the stability stops, the assumptions we have about how things operate stop.”

Julian Critchlow, from his UK perspective, highlighted the scale of change required across many government systems including health, energy, defence, transport, treasury and education. He outlined the implications of the green industrial revolution now underway, which includes the UK recently shutting down its last coal-fired power station after 140 years: “We need one in eight of our workforce to be re-skilled for the next, for the future coming economy. That's about 4 million people! So the paradigm shift is huge and urgent. But it also requires us to see it as a big opportunity, and a big one for cost of living, for growth, for the economy, in exactly the way that any industrial revolution is.”

This juxtaposition of massive risk and great opportunity, captured by Gilding and Critchlow, sets the scene for transformational change and further underscores the consequences of inaction or incrementalism. Every sector, including universities and the extended research and education sector, has to work out how they fit in, and how they both lead and collaborate to maximise their contributions.  

Investing in Our Future

As we look toward the future, the role of education and research will only grow in importance. Investing in these areas now will have a compound impact, shaping the technologies, leaders, and innovations that will define the next century. Had we acted on climate science earlier, three decades and more ago when the consequences of inaction were already becoming apparent, many of the solutions we are now urgently deploying might have been realised much sooner. It is critical that we do not delay further.

The education sector offers a compelling proposition. It is already one of Australia’s top export sectors, and its growth potential is vast. It’s time for Australia to leverage this advantage and scale it for global impact. It’s also time for universities, as a collective system, to restore and amplify their societal purpose by focusing on knowledge and innovation that addresses society’s greatest challenges, particularly climate change and the decline of nature.

From the perspective of Swinburne, and its own leadership role in this transformation mission, we are directly appealing to donors, industry partners and alumni to invest in Swinburne’s research and initiatives. Investing now will create a compounding impact, accelerating action immediately, and laying the groundwork for the technologies and leaders of tomorrow. 

We must not repeat the mistakes of the past by delaying action, or only acting incrementally, when what’s required are dramatic shifts at the level of human systems and natural ecosystems.

A Call to Action

Universities are uniquely positioned to lead the net zero transition, and they must do so with bold vision and decisive action. As institutions of learning and innovation, universities have the ability - and beyond responsibility, the compelling imperative and absolute necessity - to drive this change. But we need the support of donors, industry partners, and alumni to make this vision a reality. 

In the face of the climate crisis, we cannot afford to wait. The time to invest in education, research, and innovation is now. By doing so, we can position Australia as a global leader in sustainability, driving solutions that will benefit not just our economy, but people everywhere and the planet alike.

While we need to do all that we can as individuals and organisations, those contributions in isolation will never be enough, given the systemic scope of the challenges we face and the solutions that we need. It is through collaboration and leadership that we will achieve the net zero future.

Conclusion: A Global Growth Imperative

This essay reflects on the immense opportunity that the net zero transition offers for Australia’s education sector. By embracing sustainability as our competitive advantage, universities like Swinburne can lead the way, fostering innovation and sharing knowledge that will shape the future, and especially the jobs, enterprises and communities that will make that future work. 

As we strive to become a brainpower superpower, our universities must position themselves as both collaborators and competitors on the global stage, driving the solutions that will ensure a sustainable future for all. In the end, our greatest asset is not what lies beneath our feet, but what lies within our minds. The road to net zero is paved with knowledge, innovation and leadership. Now is the time to walk it.

Professor John Pollaers OAM is Chancellor of Swinburne University of Technology and Convenor, University Chancellors Council.