Article by Ray Mostogl, CEO of KEEN Partners

I heard the federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, The Hon Angus Taylor MP speak at two events I attended last week regarding the three key energy related opportunities which have high potential for Tasmania. In fact, he was confident enough to say, “They were Tasmania’s to lose”.

The three opportunities are exporting 100% renewable energy to provide a firming service to the National Energy Market (NEM) via Marinus Link and additional on-island generation (wind, solar, pumped hydro, etc); Exporting 100% renewable energy interstate and into Asia via green hydrogen and its related products; Providing associated services and goods based on the Hydrogen Industry – be it further processing of materials using hydrogen or the engineering, supply, training, research capabilities of Tasmanian businesses involved in this new emerging industry. In other words, the supply chain and not limiting ourselves to the supply of the commodity alone.

There is another aspect to the second and third points – the workforce which can support this and I raised this with the Minister in the hope of influencing the federal governments narrative. There is no doubt Tasmania’s 100% renewable energy will be a draw card – as is already evidenced by the fast moving major Australian resource players who are quickly developing a footprint in Tasmania. There will be strong global competition for this industry and therefore Tasmania needs to have more in its offer. An emerging industry will require a highly innovative, skilled and adaptive workforce to ensure the process can be refined to bring down the cost to a commercially sustainable level. This future workforce should be designed to be a highly diverse workforce, supported by inclusive companies and inclusive leaders. Tasmania’s future renewable energy export workforce needs to be created from scratch, the challenge is to start out with the goal of having a truly diverse workforce which is representative of the community. This workforce plans should be designed to equally represent gender, our first nations people should be welcomed, as should our overseas migrants who call Tasmania home.

Rarely is there a moment in time where we can all see something start – often the start of a new industry happens over many years and it adapts incrementally from what it was doing previously. The export of Tasmania’s renewable energy is a new industry (to date we have considered this as a utility to power our homes and businesses). Tasmania will be supplying a “branded product” to the rest of the world. Let us all work together to ensure we not only have a product we are proud of, but showcase the full cross section of our community who make up the supply chain workforce.  

Be proud of both what we do and how we do it!