1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 What is RACE for 2030?

The Reliable, Affordable, Clean Energy for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (RACE for 2030) is an industryled research collaboration to drive energy innovation across the supply chain to deliver improved, lower cost and lower emission energy services for energy customers. RACE for 2030 will increase distributed clean energy uptake by increasing load flexibility and support the growth of Australian energy technology businesses. RACE for 2030’s research outputs will be driven into the market through market transformation programs to deliver the targets of: • reducing energy costs • cutting carbon emissions • increasing customer load flexibility to allow increased penetration of renewables in the grid and increased reliability • increasing clean energy jobs.

This cross-sectoral project intersects with a number of the key research themes of RACE for 2030, including:

• Theme B4—Flexible demand and demand control • Theme B5—Anaerobic digestion for electricity, transport and gas • Theme H4—Rewarding flexible demand: Customer-friendly cost reflective tariffs and incentives • Theme H5—Smart algorithms for optimising home energy supply and use • Theme E2—Innovative foresighting and planning • Theme E3—Developing the future energy workforce.

In 2021, RACE for 2030 also adopted four cross-sectoral strategic challenges: 1. Minimum Demand—Optimising use of rooftop solar, while supporting grid security. 2. EV Integration—Accelerating smart charging of electric vehicles (EVs), Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) and two-way charging. 3. Millions of Homes—Retrofitting homes at scale to increase comfort, lower energy bills, and lower emissions.

4. Net Zero Pathways—Pathways to decarbonise enterprises and value chains.

This project closely aligns with the Net Zero Pathways challenge, which aims to identify and facilitate clear pathways to decarbonise enterprises and value chains, and fund research to solve key decarbonisation challenges.

1.2 Project rationale

This project set out to identify how net zero and decarbonisation strategies can more deeply engage community and business partnerships to deliver greater trust, legitimacy and social value. While the focus of the project was on university-based precincts with strong links to energy innovation, the project outputs are intended to be broadly applicable to scalable solutions for achieving net zero carbon emissions.

Corporations, institutions and government agencies are now major contributors to emissions reductions and investments in renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind. Such bodies lead the broader community in innovation, demonstrating what can be achieved by using renewable energy and other strategies to reduce emissions. While large organisations can use a wide variety of strategies to meet net zero carbon

commitments, the variety of commitments causes confusion for both organisations and the broader community. Some strategies lack credibility, leading to a deficit of stakeholder trust.

Although large institutions must move towards delivering broad social and environmental value, the economic stress induced by the COVID-19 pandemic makes this more difficult, as capital is constrained and businesses withdraw to their core functions. A more sophisticated understanding is needed to develop net zero strategies that deliver credible and deeper long-lasting community benefits.

Universities are well established public-benefit institutions deeply embedded within geographic, innovation and thought-leadership communities. Several Australian universities are already undertaking important strategic projects to reach net zero and SDG targets within their operations (see Section 2.11). To support such strategic shifts, this project identifies how net zero strategies can be delivered through deep stakeholder engagement, drawing on unique features of organisational character and applying a Community Wealth Building (CWB) framework, where universities feature as core anchor Institutions for socially-focused local economic recovery within a defined region. The result is a roadmap for developing inclusive business cases that more deeply intersect with organisational objectives and strengthen economic participation, stimulating a ‘Green Wave’ to deliver complementary social and environmental value beyond each organisation’s boundaries.

The three participating universities for this project are each on a journey towards net zero emissions. Each began and ended this project at a different position in terms of its strategy development, as illustrated in Figure 1.

commitment to reducing GHG emissions recognition of need to set net zero target

working towards net zero committments committment to develop net zero plan developing credible net zero plan approval of net zero plan net zero plan being implemented achieved net zero emissions

Figure 1. University net zero positions. The three participating universities began this project at different positions on their journey towards net zero emissions.

In 2017, Monash University committed to its Net Zero Initiative1 (see Section 3). UTS and Curtin University have not yet announced any firm net zero commitments, although UTS has approved development of a net zero plan, to which this project has made significant contributions (see Sections 4, 6.1, 7, 8.1 and 9.1–9.6). Curtin University has also commenced preliminary work towards development of a net zero strategy in the context of this project (see Sections 5, 6.2, 8.2 and 9.7–9.9).