The third panel this morning is about transformation. It is also being hosted by Anna Caldwell.
Mark McCallum, chief executive officer of Low Emission Technology Australia, said investment in technologies was crucial to decreasing the cost of the decarbonisation challenge that we're all facing. From a national perspective, the challenge to net-zero is hard enough without us picking and choosing which technologies we're going to back. Other countries are investing in renewables across the board and we should too.
Samantha McCulloch, chief executive officer of Australian Energy Producers, said oil and gas companies are at the forefront of the new technologies and fuels that will be needed for the transition.
She was also asked about protesters and activism and said that the industry welcomed a robust debate about energy transition. But she said the debate should be based on the facts. Ms McCulloch added that there was a role in gas in the transition, which sometimes gets lost in the ideological debate.
David Gillespie, managing director of Jemena, says it's important to look at the transition through the "whole of transition" lens. He was asked about the biogas project, and explained that Jemena has a trial with Sydney Water to power about 6000 homes in Sydney. But he says there's a bigger role for biomethane as part of the energy systems of the future. "It's a potentially large market for us to tap," he said. He agreed that we shouldn't just back one technology – we need to invest in them all.
