Webinars facts
Europe/Copenhagen
Global demand for climate technologies is growing fast and every region is keen to drive local economic development and grow local industries that can meet a portion of this demand both locally and for exports. Often the suitable technologies are developed locally as the local companies really understand the local needs. However, it is often hard for emerging technology companies to compete against the established supply chains and manufacturing scale of larger multi-national companies and so, regardless of technical superiority, many local solutions fail to get deployed.
Building on Australia’s experience of building a comprehensive climate technology innovation ecosystem, the first part of this webinar explored how to build a thriving regional or national cleantech ecosystem that can survive political changes and make a real difference. It explored how to find the best emerging technologies, nurture the companies to help bring them to market and to work with local industry to enable demonstration and deployment opportunities.
The second part of the webinar looked at options for linking international cleantech clusters in addition to the CTCN through international collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Presenter:
John O’Brien MA(Oxon), MSc, MBA, GAICD, CPEng MIEAust
John O’Brien is the founder of both Australian CleanTech and Sino CleanTech - research and advisory firms that assist cleantech companies to grow, investors to successfully invest and governments to drive cleantech industry growth. With engineering degrees from Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin and an MBA from Adelaide University, John has specialised in building connections between people, technology, finance and government to create better ways of living.
John has lectured in Leadership and Entrepreneurship on the MBA at the University of Adelaide, is a member of the South Australian Premier’s Climate Change Council and was on a Committee advising on $200m of cleantech grants for the previous Australian Government. He is a Board Director with a number of cleantech companies including wind, biosensors, polypropylene recycling in China and low emissions vehicles in the Philippines. In 2015, John launched the global VISIONS 2100 Project including a book of the same name, that seeks to redefine how environmental communications is undertaken. Having initially focussed on changing the conversation in Australia, John now works extensively across Asia developing environmental technology and finance transfer opportunities. With a passion for the environment, innovation and the psychology of leadership, his aim is to change the way environmental issues are communicated and to build positive visions of our future world.
Introduction- Australian CleanTech:
The Australian CleanTech Cluster has spent 8 years exploring and building the climate technology network within Australia and building international links to facilitate technology transfer projects from and to Australia. The Australian Cleantech Cluster has 300 company members. The Cluster forms a part of the ecosystem that is enhanced through the 500 entrants to the Australian Technologies Competition mentoring and awards program over 5 years and the 8,000 attendees and 250 pitches at the 100+ Australian CleanTech Network events run since 2008.