Contributor: Anthony Coles
© Photo credit: Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images vi
The need for an integrated Green Industrial Development policy.
Some great announcements this week from ARENA on support for the transition of Australia’s heavy vehicle fleets to non-fossil fuel options (BEV).
Electric Trucks
Industry leader TOLL Group got some much-needed help to offset the upfront costs for fleet purchases and recharging infrastructure, and the associated techno-economic modelling learnings from their business decarbonisation agenda .
Collaboration with key clients in their high-impact sectors to deliver on this is great to see.
Hydrogen Trucks
This follows up TOLL and ARENA’s earlier leadership in Hydrogen with Viva Energy.
All of these innovative projects highlight the procurement, safety, regulatory, engineering and capacity-building requirements of a green economy transition.
Advanced Manufacturing
It also highlights the knock-on effect of pilot projects on associated fields like education and manufacturing with the new Queensland-based Volvo production line getting a leg up with some forward orders on their Australian electric vehicle assembly.
Other local manufacturers like Foton Mobility Australia have been banging on about the capacity-building needs of the industry for years now.
Maybe a need for some gender diversity programs in this space too!
Australia’s Economic Complexity Dilemma
For a few year’s now I’ve been sharing chart in my talks with industry and Government from Harvard Growth Lab’s Country Rankings about the downward trend of Australia’s productive knowledge through their Economic Complexity Index (ECI).
So how does Australia, a country without an easily-identifiable major National manufacturing sector (resource extraction aside) move up the ladder of Economic Complexity?
Maybe we can learn from our No.1 trading partner? China.
