The Road to Net Zero with Craig Reucassel and Professor Deanna D'Alessandro

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]thank you for joining us I'd also like to acknowledge the gador people of the aura nation whose land we're on today and recognize any leaders past present and future who may be here today uh thanks for coming along um I'm Craig rastle I'll be your host today I'm joined by Diana De alesandro who's uh the chemist in the facility in the faculties of the engineering and Science and also the director of The Net Zero Institute um I must admit I've never done a function before where your degrees are put up behind you as well it's quite interesting hey hang on a second I got I got first class honors as well where's mine I didn't get the medal though so di you you win I say I think they've copied and pasted that from the website that might be why yeah yeah if anyone's wondering don't do the maths on my degrees it did take many years uh but anyway it's lovely to be here thanks for coming out H and this is this is going to be an exciting session as well by the way there are Nerf guns over there that will be involved in this session gee the kids got excited there yes we'll be teaching science through the the medium of Nerf guns later on which is fantastic um but we're here to talk about the Net Zero Institute and to look at some of the things you're doing D let's start with what is the NetZero Institute what's its aim what's its goals yeah so the Institute is really um based around the need to accelerate the work we're doing toward a more sustainable future for our planet and our people and it also comes from the fact that as scientists and Engineers I think you know we're in a really powerful position because I think we can save the world but the reality is that science and engineering can't do it alone and so because we're a comprehensive University we have eight incredible faculties here all the way from science and engineering to social sciences and arts and this incredible conservatorium of music and actually all of those eight faculties are involved in the net zero Institute and so it's really because of that incredibly diverse group of voices that we have at the table that actually were working on solutions that we think are much more resilient and much more robust and hopefully will lead us to much more effective Solutions yeah it's interesting because I didn't do science university and I think for quite a while I thought well I'm not really part of the debate about the solutions for climate change and that kind of thing but then when I was doing programs like war and waste and Planet a I realize that so often we do this research and we go oh okay the scientists have already kind of solved this the scientists and the engineers have found the problem have found the solution the problem is actually with the economics and the law degrees and the society and it's that kind of stuff and it's the social license and it's getting it into into play that's actually the problem so it does take you actually kind of need all those different people from different backgrounds to get this to work don't you like if if a scientist or an engineer invents the solution that is the first step here isn't it it it might not actually be the first step in fact it might be that there was a social challenge that in fact was step one and then maybe there's the technical challenge that can be solved but then often more often than not in fact things can't really go anywhere if we don't address many of the other elements the the policy challenges the legislative challenges sometimes it's the social license challenges it's actually the people on the ground found For Whom the solar farm is right on their doorstep for whom actually working with that Community is um the critical step um in in the way of the renewable energy Zone actually taking shape for the particular community so it can be a whole range a whole host of of challenges that that are presented to us absolutely now is with the netzer Institute is it just people within the University or are you working uh with government with with industry how does it work yeah so within the university as I mentioned we're a comprehensive University so we have all of the faculties of the University involved um but we're very externally facing so we have an industry board and we have an international scientific board so just last week we've actually been in Indonesia and in the Philippines with a couple of our board members of the Asian development Bank who are very important contributors to the NetZero Institute so we're getting input from all of those different places and ultimately this is a challenge that can't be solved in Sydney Australia it certainly cannot be solved at the University of Sydney and can't be solved by me or by any one of our colleagues this is the mission where it's the collective action and that is the only way that we're going to be able to address the enormity of the challenge yes it is an enormous challenge what what are some of the kind of main issues and problems you're focusing on at Sydney University through the netzer Institute yeah so we um have a whole around about 200 colleagues now involved in the Institute across all the faculty um we have about 20 different projects that that we're working on first and foremost the imperative of reducing demand for unsustainable resources so we're working for example and you'll hear a little bit later our amazing colleague Alejandro who works on um circular economy of critical minerals for example so um you know all the mobile phones I'm sure every almost probably every person in this audience is sitting there with a mobile phone at the moment there's an incredible complexity of course I'm a chemist so um you know first and foremost what is amazing to me is that 2third of the periodic table is contained in that device that's in your hand so this is an incredible you know technology has provided us with all of these amazing opportunities but the challenge is how are we going to do this transition to a cleaner energy future when these Technologies and these Solutions actually require much more many more resources than our traditional technology so take for example an electric car it's about six times as critical mineral intensive as a traditional petrol powerered car a wind farm about nine times as as critical mineral intensive as you know a traditional gas fired power station so you can see the the enormity of the problem they're much more the these Technologies and solutions are so much needed but they are more involved they are more complex so that's the the reducing demand if you like then there's this shift to zero emissions energy in Industry so we're going to hear shortly from my amazing colleague Anita who works in renewable energy particularly solar energy so reducing reducing the emissions or ultimately moving to zero emissions and then the other area we work on is something that's not really talked about a lot so we hear a lot about nature-based solutions for climate change so this is planting more trees or looking at how we might use our oceans better to absorb carbon dioxide but the reality is that all of the modeling is showing us it's not going to be enough and so we also work on Solutions these are called engineered Solutions and one of my own areas is actually an area called direct air capture which means that we're actually separating greenhouse gases and removing them from the atmosphere so we're really working on a portfolio of options and as much as I wish there was a silver bullet and there was you know something that would would solve all of this for us the reality is it's going to take a combination of approaches and there are many different Pathways and the reason that we're working not just across Australia but with many other people across the world is that it is context specific so for different countries around the world there are different combinations of solutions and and I guess it's just getting practical about the fact that there will be different Pathways that different geographical regions in Australia and around the world will need to use yeah it is it's it's fascinating how different you know totally different approaches depending what your natural resources are what you have there it's interesting talking about the complexity of this at the moment the climate change Authority came out last week with its latest update our emissions are falling by a small amount no nowhere near as much as we need them be falling and they're falling only in really two sectors that's renewable energy and landbased capture so in all those other areas some many other areas like industry waste transport all these areas we are still increasing our emissions so we we we need to be looking at as you say every little aspect there is there's no Silver Bullet when people go what's the one thing I can do it's like there are so many things we need to be doing in this area so and look as you say I'm going to show a bit of a video here looking at from a zero perspective and it's about a balancing act there's often areas at the moment that we don't have the technology at the moment to be zero carbon at the moment so it's about looking at it overall it's it's about looking at the manufacturer of products it's looking their use stage it's looking at their end of life for instance so um for instance a few years ago we were doing a a a climate change documentary and one of the questions that kept getting asked of us at the time this is a few years ago was well there's no point having electric vehicles because in Australia you charge them and you're just charging them off Cal fired power stations so they're actually worse you know it's what's the difference I either put Petrol in or I put coal in my VV so we wanted to look at that particular issue so we decided to do it through the medium of drag racing cars uh naturally but I'll I'll talk you through why we did it afterwards and what we wanted to look at it and also what we didn't touch on which leads to our next speaker as well so this is oh I'm the one with the button here it is I've picked the fastest and most powerful production car ever made in Australia the Holden HSV gtsr W1 and I'm putting it up against the newest generation of electric vehicles the Tesla Model S neither of them are cheap but I know what you really want to know which one is fastest I got to say I'm pretty nervous uh I'm not used to driving a car like this and I've never drag raced I also have a crowd of people ready to laugh at me if I lose this thing time to put the Tesla and my limited driving abilities to the test [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was far out woo oh my God woo that thing is mad that's crazy that is crazy it's fast oh man this the launch is unbelievable yeah the launch is nut I still don't have my heart back I was watching it Go and it just bang bang G I tell you what that is unbelievable man this is the future we got to have some fun yeah we got to have some fun all I got to do is have some wheels and some spoilers and some sexy I'll be perfect exactly so we know that a Tesla can outrun the most powerful car in Australia but how does it Stack Up environmentally this one doesn't pump anything out of his tailpipe as a matter of fact I don't even think it has a tailpipe but if it charges Off the Grid this is the difference and if you charge this off renewable energy then it's more like this so yes this is what we were trying to do we're were trying to show people that yes if you're charging Off the Grid an EV was still better but also to then show if you start to charge these things off renewable energy it fundamentally changes what happens in this but it's interesting this isn't like that guy talking about all we need is some good wheels and some spoilers the different types of things that stop people taking it up like you they go I don't like the look of that car or whatever this is why you know scientists and Engineers go we've made you the solution go yeah it doesn't look good enough mate uh and there're the different aspects in there but but interestingly at the time that was the kind of issue that's now moved on now if you now look at online the online debate from people who are trying to push back against EVS is to say oh but once you manufacture you look at the manufacturer of them and the battery and the critical minerals as we talked about that they are less environmentally friendly than a gas car now when they leave when they're in the the the shop floor in actual fact yeah an EV is less environmentally friendly when it leaves the shop floor but over the lifetime of it particularly depending on how you charge it it becomes better overall but that's pushed that new focus is now the question becomes okay well how do we build the batteries how do we look at the end of life of the batteries and all these things how do we make it so that these cars actually are much more sustainable long term even in the manufacturer and that and that is where I want to join get our new next guest up here uh someone who's at the Forefront of looking at these issues is associate professor Alejandra Montoya director of fuel and resources laboratory director of environmental engineering and part of the NetZero Institute Alejandro take us on to the next part of the [Applause] journey thank you very much Craig for that nice introduction and thank you for everyone to come and and and listen to to us um I would like to start with a question and and touching on something that Dian just talked about about mobile Fones um who has a mobile phone stuck in the drawer for a long time just collecting dust many of us right and imagine if if that mobile phone is what is one of the keys that it will help us to transition to a clean energy future right so I am going to talk here about um electronic waste and uh and how can they be used for extracting some elements that we require for some technologies that are currently um present and some technologies that are coming in in the future so when you see a mobile phone or a laptop or a noia then think not as a waste but you must start thinking as um a treasure throve there where we can get some value out of it um in the case of um electronic waste and extracting elements from it uh the science and technology is growing very rapidly um but it doesn't stop there we require people to be conscious in the use of electronic waste um how do we dispose the electronic waste how do we use them until we cannot use it anymore so is very important that this circularity of electronic waste becomes a embedded in every single person so that we can um take advant advantage of of the um of the opportunities in in there um er we all live in an age where um the technology is skyrocketing and we are producing billions of electronic waste every every year um we are only recycling as more part of it and in Australia we are recycling about 10% of the electronic waste um but there is a lot of value in those electronic waste um for instance Coppa gold silver nickel many elements there that we need to dig from mines but they are already present in a very easy form for us to extract and and and to use them um electronic waste um has more elements concentrated on it than they exist in mines for instance Coppa exist it's the amount of coppa in electronic waste it's 40 times larger than in in mines gold silver um what you see in that picture it's a picture from from dealor Marsh a um a photographer from um South Africa and he took a picture of that mine is a copper mine and um he collected the amount of Copa that was extracted from that mine and embedded it in that particular picture so that you can have a look of what are the requirements of mining for a particular amount of material so if we are able to recycle some of the elements that are in electronic way then the um a mining Technologies um they they we won't need to dig so much um M MOS um from it I've been talking a lot about Copa ni but there are a number of elements that are becoming really important in this energy transition and these elements are globally um are localized and some elements then they have some risk for the clean energy transition um ium um Vanadium and copper are um very very important elements that we will need for our um um energy energy transition um electrical Vehicles Electro Vehicles uses um silver carbon and some rare elements there for improving the efficiency of magnets and de magnets then miniaturized a Motors and and so mobile phones Diana was talking about a number of elements there um but it's reaching gold silver rare elements uh this is what we are using now but what we are going to need in the future uh for instance um flow batteries um we will need to build enormous batteries that they can be a allocated near um Power stations or or um or solap Panos so that they can store the energy there so that they can be used at night and and those batteries will be based on on Vanadium and zinc for instance other elements like uh lithium nickel and so on they they will need to be uh produced massively in in the coming in the coming years there are many ways to extract these elements from electronic waste and um historically most of the electronic waste has been uh treated with a thermal process so that means just heating up the um electronic waste and um taking out the elements and then um um burning the the the plastic and then treating the gases coming out from those plants um in order for them for them to be economic they need to be built in a very very large scale um but for instance Australia um it's not allowed to uh export electronic waste anymore and many countries are are following on the same on the same legislation so uh Solutions did need to be localized and in in many cases they would need to be um carried out in in in Regional area so other methods they like biological leeching or or um Hydro um metalogical methods then then becomes really more important because um a they they can be a built in a small scale and they can be um then run in in Regional operations so um one of the uh big aspects that we are doing here at the university is that we are trying to produce value out of electronic waste um we are talking about mod boards from from computers um we are talking about a um mobile mobile phones and and they contain a number of elements there that they have um important value and we are excting them with a um hydr metalogical processes that means that we we we keep the metals in solution and and then it's more environmentally friendly and so on um we we are there for spinning out several companies that um uh hopefully they will be um taking advantage of this technology to commercialize this Fant uh fantastic aleandro come great join us here um so in terms of that that's fascinating So you you're looking at the you're looking at the liquid approach is that the way you're going on it that's correct yeah okay and what's the benefit of that like you're getting computer stuff wet when when you burn waste um let's assume that uh the system in which you burn the waste is like this Auditorium but the gases that are generated they are mostly toxic and they need to be treated so if you want to treat those toxic gases then you need to build a space that is probably three times this space and it cost a lot um so do it in liquid phase then um the environmental um aspect becomes a lot more affable and you can control more waste in liquid than in gas and and in terms of this technology where is it in terms of being comparable I always find it amazing that it's cheaper to kind of go into the middle western Australia Dig Down dig out trying to get critical mineral that way than reusing the minerals we've already extracted are you is it the kind of thing you'll be price competitive with mining to recycle the the critical minerals yeah absolutely well we it's about two two problem two problems here one is an environmental problem because we need to solve the problem of the electronic waste the electronic waste on one side they contain five retardants and when they are send into land Fields they uh leech out element that are very toxic and do not degrade in the atmosphere and end up in water streams so we need to to deal with that even if it is expensive to do and if we are not um allowed to export that electronic waste to be used in other uh or treated in other countries we need to deal with it now uh the other the other part is that um the the the waste is generating value through Copa through gold through silver so the the technology produces a a value uh then whether it is comparable with large scale uh technologies that are being there for a very long time I think there is a gap in there the good thing is that as it is in the small scales it is economically viable and what it means is that making it um larger then then then there is a lot of prospect to be is it also the case that to make it easier for you to be extracting those minerals at the end that you kind of need the manufacturers to build phones or batteries or whatever in a way that helps the recycling at the end because I always hear things recycle people saying you know if this was made instead of with a glue it was made with a screw we'd be able to take it apart and recycle it but because it's made this way because they want to save a few cents at this part it makes it harder at the end or does your system kind of overcome that problem anyway well absolutely um a when when it comes to um a net zero Technologies um what we usually do in Australia is that we dig minerals we produce the ores or the concentrates and then we sell the concentrates to be extracted somewhere else um I think with this technology what we will be using is actually producing the product which is Coppa which is silver which is gold with technologies that we can control control the release of carbon dioxide or release of um toxic chemicals to the atmosphere so it becomes a product that is produced through a carbon neutral technology let's hope we get there quickly J I just want to ask you on this because how does the kind of Net Zero Institute work with this kind of technology that Alejandro is looking at you know again breakr great work on the science front how do we get it to that next stage yeah so actually quite interesting I think I'm not sure if Alejandra remembers but probably one of the first conversations we had um so I should explain we have a number of what we call pillars and these pillars in the case of our critical minerals pillar um now has over 50 people across I think five faculties of the university and actually one of the first questions that I think when you shared some of your technology was the question how do we make this bankable and so that was actually the start of quite significant work with the University of Sydney's business bus school and so looking at circular business models and these are used around the world and there is some really good practice and so that's something we take really seriously the sharing of knowledge and knowledge exchange not just within our own country but actually across the world and that's one of the things that we provide a platform for yeah so you're you're yeah because as I said yeah I've seen all these fantastic things over the years doing we own wayte going great we've got this solution and then I look two or three years later and it's like it still hasn't come through the system so you got to get the business the economic case the legal case there's so many of those barriers there to actually get it to the place where we can actually see it as a natural thing now I'm just going to grab this uh clicker again to get to our next topic um one in terms of that waste question at the end of the love uh because I do war and waste the question I get asked a great deal nowadays is what about solar panel waste there's a lot of people very concerned about solar panel waste so I just wanted to very quickly talk about this um at the moment it's not as bad so in 2018 our solar panel waste was 6,000 tons of solar panel waste but obviously it tends to last 20 30 years you know it's long lasting so the kind of all the stuff we're putting on now is going to be a bigger problem down down the line so by 2035 we're thinking of be about 100,000 tons of solar panel waste I just want to put that in context and I'm going to have to slightly change the graph size here so that's still that little one there is still the 2018 6000 and the 2035 there is the solar in 20 35 now for the for the fans of solar in this room like me who really love solar you're all really nervous right now right because you're seeing this here you're going what what's Craig going to show us what's he doing is that is that solar in 2050 or whatever so that just for context is coal ash waste now every year right now 12 and a half million tons of coal ash waste so every time and again so this is co Ash waste and we never really see it despite the there's lots of it around so this is up next to Lake mcari this is a big pit of coal ashway that's just sitting there by Lake mcquary just by there so now I am not saying by the way that we shouldn't be focusing on how we recycle it's great as we've said The more we can reuse those critical minerals reuse the glass it reduces the carbon footprint of that product it's a really important thing that we're doing and there's lots of great research going on in Australia right now but as sometimes seems to happen online nowadays if anyone's ever telling you oh we shouldn't be using those solar panels cuz it's going to lead to waste in actual fact I've slightly misled you this figure of 12 a half million tons a year of Co lash waste is actually a few years old the current figure is about 12 million tons why is it going down it's going down because of our shift to Renewables and I actually I actually if only I knew a group of scientists or something could help me crun crunch the numbers on this because I've been looking at this and I actually am pretty sure that solar panels every solar panel we use is actually reducing ucing our overall waste in Australia because of the fact that it takes away from what is the large one of our largest bits of waste and that is colash waste so we need to be improving this but we need to be focusing on uh continuing this and what would make what would make solar panels even better if we could make them more efficient if only there was somebody who could talk to us about making solar panels even more efficient please welcome to the stage Prof Professor Anita ho Bailey from the John John hook chair of I love that introduction so yes all right so let's start before we kind of talk about how we make solar panels more efficient which I'm very I'm very keen to do because I've got a small roof and lots of things I want to run off the solar panels um let's talk talk us through how they work to start with sure okay so how does solar cell work uh first of all you need the sun oh hang on I need the clicker so I've got the yeah because I want to show you a beautiful photo of the Sun so we need the Sun and um the sun eject out uh energetic particles called the photons so uh it's also electromagnetic uh radiation AA light and light is made up of particles at different energy so and you can see it in nature so you can see that in light there is a spectrum of different energetic particles so for example with UV we have uh particles with a electron volt of three about three electron volts so what is a electron volt it's basically a unit of energy so one electron volt is around 60 million trillion times smaller than the energy you find in a grain of sugar so it's a very very small unit but we get loads and loads and loads of photons um shining on us every day and um as we move down the rainbow you can see the energy of the photons reduce so uh for example with blue light you get the uh energy of the photon of three electron or 2.6 electron volt and then green is 2.4 orange is 2.2 and so on so you get down to Red is around one electron volt Okay so we've got the sunlight and then the next thing you need is a semiconductor so what is a semiconductor so a semiconductor where there's no energy input into the material it's just an insulator so you get the electrons sitting there doing nothing so it's immobile so it's an insulator but if you give the semiconductor enough energy then the electrons will jump onto higher energy levels where they will become mobile so it conducts electricity so uh in semiconductor you have electrons sitting at different energy levels and in the low energy levels it forms a veence band does it show that yes and for electrons at high energy levels they form a continuous band called a conduction band I hope you're all listening because there'll be a test at the end yeah that's right you're all going to have to make a solar cell after this talk so but like every cooking show I've got one ready for you so between the conduction band and the veillance band is the band Gap so what happens is when the sunlight Shines on the semiconductor it gives it enough energy for the electrons to oh hang on for the electrons to jump up to the oh whoa whoa okay to jump up to conduction man and become a um yeah become a conductor okay so uh why do I you know why do I go through all this band Gap and electrons and Valence band conduction band because I need to explain all this uh for the game to work and then after that I'll explain how we increase the efficiency of the solar cell okay so just to so I'm not testing you but I'm trying to use the game to sort of like make the knowledge really sink into the head so I need three um life audience participations yes it's not a live show without oh okay so I've got you and I've got oh this is so hard so there's three of you maybe um you just have to talk am soel which two want to come down okay so why don't you come down and then you come down and what's your name annab Annabelle Annabelle welcome yes and don't do anything until I tell you to do show and what's your name Anna Anna Shan Shan so Annabelle Anna and Shan okay so follow me and come over here okay so what we're trying to simulate oh okay so hang on I think um yeah it's it's like a Nerf gun 101 okay so Sol 10 I feel like we're in the danger zone over here I thought they were going to be shooting that way yeah what's going on here deely placed so so what we're going to do is we're going to simulate a solar cell and the band Gap and the conduction band and the veilance band Okay so we've got Annabelle here what you're going to do is your Nerf gun is going to be a f on with energy just above the band Gap so that means when you shoot your Nerf gun you will have the dot Landing just above the band Gap meaning the bottom of the conduction band okay so do you want to give it the practice and so before we do that when she shoot we should go yay okay so on the count of three and only shoot once one 2 3 go yay okay so we've then we've got um Shan okay so Shan you're going to be the photon with the energy below the bangam yeah exactly yes so when she should we will all go a okay so on the count of three one two three shirot how do you shoot ah okay hang on how do you Nerf gun you wouldn't get that in an American school and then as you hold that you make sure it's below below the conduction band go who yes job oh okay right so we got Anna Anna you're going to be a photon with energy way above the Banger yeah so it will be quite so try not to overshoot but just like on the top off the r net can you do that and then we go yay yeah so yeah so so not not above just right there right there because you want solar cell to still catch that phot on yay okay now I'm going to test you guys so we've got um Annabelle with the photon energy just above the bang gab and Shan below the bang and then we've got Anna uh Anna sorry Anna way above the band gap which one is the most efficient way of using the photon energy okay so I would say um Shan is that efficient way of using energy no how about Anna is it efficient way of using energy no and Anabelle is the most efficient way of using energy because you only need just above the bandap right so so that's what happen in our solar cells so um for example with the solar panels we have in the solar farm and on the roof is made of silicon and the Silicon band Gap is 1.1 EV so that means it needs Photon energy just at 1.1 EV so if you shine UV light blue light green light orange light the light the energy in the light still get converted to electricity but not efficiently so a lot of that excess energy get converted into heat so your solar panel get really hot uh in the sun and the highest efficiency you can get out of silicon solar panel is 30% okay so what do we do in our lab what we do is we're going to stack the material on top of each other so we have the Silicon with a bang out of one EV and we stack another material on top that is maybe 1.5 EV and then stack another material on top it is 2 e so that when you have the sun shining light on you will um convert all of the uh Photon energy efficiently so what we'll do is we come over here and we have a triple Junction tandem solar cell okay so you'll be happy because this time your Photon will be captured by the solar cell yes so you will aim for the red okay yeah and then you'll aim for the green and then you'll aim for the blue because you're a high energy Photon you're a meat energy Photon and you're a low energy Photon yeah okay so on the count of three I think you got lots of darts in there so you just go wild you should hate in there okay so you aim for red you aim for green you aim for blue yeah so on the count of three just keep shooting all together yeah so you go for red you go for green you go for blue yeah on the count of three one two three shoot go go go yes well done yay excellent thank you so much thank you so much so you can hand the gun backun yeah we got to keep it for the next effect okay so that's the Whole Net Zero institute's budget in those guns okay thank you very much thank you thank you let's give them a round of applause okay so what happens is silicon solar cell the highest efficiency efficiency you can ever get is 30% double Junction solar cell the highest efficiency you can get is 45% and then triple Junction is around 51% so in our lab that's what we do and people may ask well if you keep adding layers what happens we get to around 60% and why we don't go beyond well that's another you know another lecture on physics semiconduct with physics okay so I'll show you what we do in our lab and what we do in our lab is we make use of this material called metal Hali peros skites and of course in real in reality it's a lot smaller so you have the metal the met the metal and then the halite and then the organic Caton so they arrange in a crystal structure like this and what makes this amazing is uh it's got very good uh photo absorption so we can make it really thin so the thickness of the layer that is required for solar cell is around one micron so a piece of hair is around 100 Micron so you can see how thin it is and for the Silicon technology we're using 100 microns as well so you can see the layer is really thin and what we do is we coat it onto uh the conventional silicon solar cell to increase the efficiency so you can see that should okay so as should turn Okay so probably the the torch um battery is not really um yeah it's not it's not charged enough to turn you see those big wind turbines as you drive down a camera Anita also pushes those around at [Laughter] night o anyway this is embarrassing isn't is the [Music] other is it is it connected on both pits yeah okay anyhow so trust me it works so so the um most efficient silicon cell at the moment is around 27% and in our we are pumping out solar cells at around 30% so the idea is to increase the efficiency of the panels without increasing the amount of mass used uh and therefore we can also reduce the amount of land area being used for solar panels so um yeah this is what we do in our lab it's fantastic it's really exciting and and particularly I mean I think particularly the other day I was I I said it's small roof I was trying to charge an electric car r the house in that the idea of more efficient so this kind of increase if you go from a 27% to 51% like you you're nearly doubling you're nearly doubling the amount of power you're getting out of that out of the same space yes that's right that's the idea yeah okay absolutely and and what stage are we at with this technology because I'm excited yes so um there are we're doing very well because the material is amazing uh and the stage is we are definitely got the um demonstration working people are looking at scale up so there are startups in the world and I think last time I counted there are around 30 uh companies startup and established companies looking at this technology and around 49 uh institutions that are working in exactly the same thing as us but we are one of the eighth in the world that got 30% certified so certifi meaning someone certifi that yes you're when you claim you're making 30% efficient sale you're really making them so yeah so so then are you working with companies now looking to build this are you working with companies in Australia or per overseas or where are we doing it yeah so we're working with Australian startup uh they focus is on Silicon technology and they give us the Silicon cell and we stack the perov guyss on top so we look at uh manufacturability we also look at the stability of the materials because they don't like oxygen they don't like water um which is abundant on Earth and so in our lab we develop knowledge on how they degrade and by knowing how they degrade we can stop them from um degrading so uh we were able to get the cells to pass three industry standard tests of course there are many other industry standard tests that we need to pass so we're working on it how much more does it use a lot more material is it thicker or larger or is it you know fairly similar is it going to look the same what's yeah so it looks exact ly the same um it's going to be 1 Micron thicker than the already 100 Micron thick solar cell so it's adding 1% extra thickness to um to the uh to the cell and all the rest we want to we want to make it as similar as possible as the current product so we coat the layer on top uh and have the exactly the same electrical contact yeah wow so and does it does it use more Rare Minerals or anything else or is it is it fairly similar overall in terms of what it uses um so it uses the metal it uses halight and you also use organic material so uh that's the extra extra material that we use so in our lab we pump out around 10,000 solar cells a year uh and we only buy very small bottles uh that will last us around 3 to six months so four bottles will last us 10,000 Sol cells wow so so when do you think we might see this on the market like is it are we years off or is this around the corner so there demonstration plans already in China uh already on the roof and also in the field and they're collecting the outdoor data to see the uh lifetime of the modules because at the moment silicon modules last quite long so the uh product warranty is around 15 years and the performance warranty is around 25 years um yes so they're looking at the outdoor um outdoor data so for us uh we don't have 25 years to sit around what we do in our lab is we put them into environmental Chambers and do accelerating testing so we thermal cycle them or we just so you're having to prove that it will last long enough that's the kind of that's the kind of barrier at the moment yes that's right yeah okay in terms of this what's the again what does the how does when the Net Zero Institute come into this in terms of the other problems of getting to the next step here um I have to just first tell everybody because this is very exciting Anita solar cells are in space so just to link this to the previous session um with the incredible astronaut um but look I guess that's one part of it of gaining the renewable energy and doing so more efficiently and effectively the other side of this is what do you then do with that renewable energy and really what we're doing at The Institute is connecting all of the pieces it's like a you know thousand piece jigsaw puzzle that we're trying to put together and so the question is you know can do you store it so I think we all know that you know batteries are an incredible storage technology but there's also improvements that need to be made there are significant challenges critical minerals challenges for Batteries as well and you've probably all heard a lot in the media recently about battery fires and so forth so there's a lot of improvements needed in battery technologies um there's also some really cool Technologies where we can harness excess renewable energy so you've probably heard that at times in Australia we actually have too much renewable energy and so what do we do with that and actually one of the things that's being um talked about quite a lot is using that excess energy and using it to split water to make hydrogen and so you've probably all heard a lot of interest in the use of hydrogen the reason is that when it burns it makes water again so it's a a clean um effluent if you like and so um once we've got the hydrogen we can actually use that to do a lot of different stuff so we can use it to power devices um we can use it to make um what they call Green chemicals so rather than carbon-based chemicals we can use the hydrogen to make chemicals that power you know for fuels for example um so we can connect these Technologies together they don't exist on their own really the magic and what's special what's not magic at all science but but the the the magic is when um you actually Implement and the people the end user receives the product just just on the hydrogen front CU I feel like I must admit personally I keep going from being really excited by a green hydrogen to being kind of seeing reading things and being like oh this is more problematic I I think previously the kind of model was you know like Australia will create this hydrogen we'll ship it to Japan to run Japan's system now it seems to be like oh the travel's really hard so it might be that we use hydrogen for instance in Western Australia where we dig up the ores an iron ore and we actually you know do the first part of the process there so the hydrogen is used to kind of create green metal and you know it's that we don't then have to travel the hydrogen is that one of the issues you're looking at in the Institute is that kind of how do we use hydrogen properly and does it have to travel or do we do it at home yeah absolutely so all the way from producing hydrogen which is using for example renewable energies to split water to make hydrogen um all the way to how do we transport that hydrogen so one of the ch Alles is that hydrogen causes embrittlement in pipelines so you actually can't pass it through the existing infrastructure that we have in Australia and so one of the things that we're working on is how you can actually convert the hydrogen into carriers and so you can carry hydrogen with other types of chemicals like ammonia or even with natural gas and in those cases because they're liquids we may be able to actually transport the hydrogen and then crack it apart at the other end and that's actually one of the big areas that's being discussed for Australia in terms of um bunker ships that actually take liquid ammonia for example over to Japan and they do the cracking in in Japan yeah ale aleandra you would add to that yeah I may add a little bit on the hydrogen part um the hydrogen is generated in an equipment that called electrolyzer and it has two components one component produces hydrogen which is valuable and the other one prod produces oxygen which is very cheap the hydrogen that is the valuable is not that valuable It's relatively cheap because we produce it very at massive scale so one of the things that the technology that I am developing in the lab is to use the oxygen compartment of the electrolyzer to actually do the job of extracting metals from electronic waste and at the same time produces hydrogen so in that case the a metals that are being recovered are the valuable product and the hydrogen is an addon that it can be used in case the company would like to do that so we approach iGo in Western Australia to look at that opportunity and and they are very interested in that and and coming back to the amount of energy we said to them the the the the technology is energy intensive what they said to us is don't worry about energy we have plenty and we usually waste it so if your technology all actually requires energy it would be better for us because we will make use of the waste energy I also want to ask you Alejandra just we're talking about the batteries there and are you also looking at recycling of batteries because I know that's the kind of that's the other question I get asked a lot of about is what about the end life for EVS and batteries on our houses and that where are we in terms of battery recycling in in Australia I think we in in terms of recycling we do well but what we do with that product is another story so how do we give value to the to the to the item that is being recycled um I think all of us know about what happened to the Plastics that were uh recycled um by warts that we recycled the plastic we put it in a shed and we didn't know what to do with it and in the end we had to burn it right so in terms of batteries recycling I think Australia is doing very well in terms of recycling there is no now new legislations that requires the states to recycle I think what we need to improve is what do we do with those items that is being recycled so Tech is there the technology there that can use the battery absolutely yes so again the technolog is there it's about those next steps of creating a market creating the infrastructure yeah exactly yeah and I don't know if we did burn the plastic just so you know I think a lot of that's still still still sitting in warehouses actually at the moment we're trying to find some solutions for that absolutely just I also want to ask is it's interesting because in a weird way what Anita is doing was we talked about that as a kind of way of being a positive for hydrogen but again I've seen this interesting debate that it's like hydrogen used to be talked about as being the kind of what have hydrogen cars and then it seemed to be oh well electric vehicles much more efficient way because you know kind of in terms of you how much electricity you have from the Sun or wherever you know a large proportion of that ends up in the car ends up driving whereas with hydrogen you lose a lot of that energy and then it was like well okay we'll use it for trucks but then even that seems to it's not going to be the case and then we say well we use it for boats and that it seems like the kind of efficiency of just using electricity directly seems to be pushing hydrogen into lots of different areas what what do you think we'll end up using hydrogen for green hydrogen who wants to deal with that question I maybe I can add a few thoughts and I'm going to pass across to Anita but um hydrogen is as an I guess as an at an atomic level is an extremely important component of many of our fuels so if we can use green hydrogen produced from renewable sources rather than using fossil hydrogen which is usually called that there's all this color spectrum for hydrogen you might have heard of brown hydrogen and turquoise hydrogen and um blue hydrogen and and so forth and so on but if you still part of green washing I'm not not here to do that corra but if um if we can replace Brown hydrogen with green hydrogen then that's better obviously and don't you already just actually go to an actually yeah yeah wasn't quite sure about the question no no no I guess I was just saying that you know by by making solar cells far more efficient you're actually again making it more likely we go down that full electrification route rather than kind of going down a hydrogen route potentially okay so I guess the idea is um you know some of the ideas is Australia is a big piece of land and therefore we get a lot of solar particles hitting the area right and then you have areas like Japan and Korea there sort of EST St AG poor so the idea is we can put all the solar panels in our country and then we get the electricity convert that to hydrogen so in a sense we're bottling the solar energy in the form of hydrogen so they export and then ship it up yeah to Japan and and Korea so it's it's like exporting because at the moment we export our energy Australia is a net energy exporter we exported in the form of coal I mean Mike Canon Brooks is going to try and do it through cable under the ground to Singapore but hydrogen is another way we go we can send our solar energy overseas to do that kind of stuff yeah in in terms of hydrogen I think Australia has a big opportunity um because we are an important producer of ammonia uh we have several companies here in Australia producing ammonia and ammonia requires hydrogen uh um so uh that that's a big opportunity that that we have yeah and is huge I mean I I don't use it much in my life I don't think but it's huge the amount of ammonia that's actually created just on the just on the the hydrogen though D is it right you've you've already through the Institute you've actually made a a hydrogen powered drone yeah so we've got um actually one of our aeronautical Engineers who has been able to um develop a type of a fuel cell that actually operates off hydrogen as the energy source um so what they're doing here is an incredible project in Regional um Queen land where they're actually um using these drones to deliver medicines into Regional and Outback Queensland because um at the moment they're either doing that on Long Haul trucks which are obviously working or fossil um fuel um or they're actually flying light planes out um so this has been a a really critical project I think and they're hoping that it might actually roll out over more of regional Australia amazing and one lucky person here we're going to use the hydrogen drone to spy on you on your way home no I'm just kidding just kidding but it's great to see this even that even that little kind of it must be fun to have those little experiments going on where you see Solutions and you see this is going to become the big solution in the future it is fantastic well I I look I hope you like me have been excited by all of this science and and and also excited by the idea that you know the Net Zero Institute is is is trying to take the you know the other parts of the university to work together and make these incredible scientific and engineering breakthroughs become more of a reality quicker because it's been I must admit over the years of doing the war on waste and and climate documentaries it's the constant thing that frustrates the hell out of me is just seeing these incredible breakthroughs that we have from scientists in Australia and engineers in Australia and then just not seeing them come to Market and we need to get them to Market so much quicker to have that kind of breakthrough so uh thank you so much guys please thank Tiana Alejandro and Anita for a lovely conversation uh and also to Anna Anna Shan and Annabelle as well for our wonderful shooting and for amazingly not shooting us throughout that uh that was definitely against occupational health and safety here at Sydney University so no one's allowed to tell anyone about it but thank you so much for we actually just let's quickly I think we we got a couple minutes let's take a couple of questions from the audience I think quickly let's get some questions yes yes madam yep yep ah okay okay yeah yeah so um yeah that's a good question so when you put a additional solar cell on top of another solar cell so you know how with batteries you got a positive charge and a negative charge so when you put the semiconductor material on top you also need a negative layer and a positive layer so you're adding three layers although they're really really thin they 1 nmet so it's like 1,000 times smaller than one micron already um and then sometimes you also need to add an extra layer just like a sandwiching layer interfacing the two cells so you add around four to five layers extra for each additional solar cell so if you do three Junctions that means you're adding so and and if the bottom you also make the make that perov Sky layer yourself perov sky perov sky perov sky that means you make 15 layers so I have uh researchers in my lab staying up until 11: p.m. if is going to make the all three layers by himself so that's the tricky part uh and imagine if you're in a manufacturing line and that layer is not quite perfect there may be pin holes or may you may have nonuniformity so I guess the challenge of realizing that is the sort of um the real liability of the manufacturing but but did you also say you have got up to 50% in some tests in the lab what's the highest You' got to in terms of in our lab is 30% okay uh and oh I must say too in space so the The multi- Junction or this multi-layer concept is not new and they use for space but um the material they use is very expensive so it's based on Gan M night and it's around $10,000 per square meter wow whereas the panel you've got on your roof is around $30 per square meter in terms of manufacturing cost so uh what we try to do is we try to uh breach that Gap uh and maybe offer a more lower cost solution for the space solar cells so if you look up to the sky you can um there are two of our solar cells in space sort of you know orbiting around the earth on mod Earth orbit so we're trying to yeah test those ourselves in space and see if we can offer that solution in um the Aerospace uh Market yeah okay fantastic other the question yes Madam I has anyone ever looked into tidle tile why hasn't tidal energy been something it's an incredibly powerful resource I'd imagine yes it is and there's definitely some not here at the University but there are definitely some big groups around the world looking at it one of the challenges with tidal energy as far as I understand it is actually the challenge of how do you um transmit that energy um and actually get it back to land it's a not too dissimilar challenge for offshore wind as well um so there are these massive cables that they have for offshore wind but for tidal it's actually even more challenging than for offshore wind yeah I think from what I've seen when I've looked into this a lot of the early examples of tidle stuff firstly it's really powerful and also it's in it's in salt water so they would have systems that could capture the energy but then corrode within a short period of time or break because of the extreme uh pressure there's then I think some Scottish companies have done ones that kind of float on top of their water but again it's just the harnessing of it they're struggling with it and it's again it comes down to a cost thing it's not you can't get the energy but you go well I'm going to have to pay way more and constantly have to change this and fix it whereas a solar panel and a wind turbine is bloody cheap so that's here so just talking about that cheapness so we know that to put a wind turbine up it there's a huge expense in the amount of concrete the amount of whatever and blah blah blah and no doubt they have to be parts that have to be replaced how does that offset against the amount of energy that one produce my understanding is that within if you look at a life cycle analysis of that within about six months you are carbon neutral carbon positive within about 6 months in terms of that so you know you you all of these things when no of things we look you got to look at the life cycle analysis so you look at the overall things so it's after 6 months it's it's well and truly paid back the environmental cost of making it because I think that that's the biggest problem that that this um organization and people thinking about Net Zero have is to convince the ordinary man um that the value and the energy put into it is not um more than what you get out yes and and and once you do that then the you have everybody on board but you know and there's a lot of well there's a lot of misinformation on the internet about that kind of stuff because there's also a lot of very powerful um yeah groups who who it's in their interest to to kind of misinform the community I just think it's really important to sort of to get the mindset right for the absolutely uh Christian down here at the front here we got a quick Yep this lady it's a very L question um it's a very low Tech question so I apologize I would like to recycle the technology that I have in the cupboard at home but I don't know how to make it safe for me in terms of taking away the data so that's why just keep keeping it to thinking oh one day I'll have to find out how to do that if you just say go Google it at home I'll do that no no well look we have looked into that and that one of the major reasons that people aren't recycling that stuff and so Mobile Master which is the kind of one you can go to any shop and get a little packet and you can send it to Mobile Master the way they basically do it is they destroy the phone and it's taken into pieces they can't they make it in a way that you cannot get the data off it they you know the data cannot be taken that's what they kind of guarantee so that's the Australian system in terms of recycling your phones and it does it's still usable for all the products you thank you very much it's called Urban mining yes um a question over here sir um mine's even a lower level than these other that's even that's better great I mean the lady up there talked about the ordinary person and I think as a lawyer you'll understand the reasonable person ordinary person test um as far as technology and science fantastic and it certainly gives me hope from what you lovely people have told me I think it's even more fundamental that we got to change people's attitude their mentality because you know I see recycling bins and there's bottles in there that are half full of water empty the bloody water on the grass for God's sake and also something like the turn and earn scheme where they' put a value on what we would traditionally call Waste well I believe it's been very successful so I know it's at a lower level but I think that's the level we've got to really you know it's about changing human behavior yeah absolutely yeah and I that's it's interesting like when Diana talked about trying to find a way to to make Alejandro's method worked that's ex the the return is actually a great example of it put a 10-cent value on it it's massively increased recycling levels you believe it or not I've made $120,000 from the r turn and earn scheme I work as a psychologist my doctor told me about 5 years ago Tom your job is killing you it's too sedentary so I got off my backside I collect collect collect $1,000 Grand oh gee we I always wondered how much those were right but again I picked them up from again that's that's the thing is that's the thing of putting a value in it we need to make all of this stuff have a value all of this stuff it constantly drives me me nuts it's that so often in Australia the cheapest option is often the least environmentally sustainable option that's where we need to be lobbying government to change the things that's why we need lawyers and economists involved in all this kind of stuff which is why this is such a central approach policy right at the Back Sir thanks Craig um we're talking about um changing um uh mindsets and and human behavior one of the things um Sydney Siders will remember only this week we were told um there's a couple of p u turbines out for regular maintenance and two break down and there was a bit of stress in the system and a lot of news reports and so forth said oh people are being asked to keep their energy use down um there was no talk of telling people use as much electricity as you can between 10:00 a.m. and 300 p.m. cuz it's a sunny day and we' got Oodles of it so crank up your air conditioner I put mine at 19° at that during that time um because I got solar panels and I just have a all buting out cold air 3:00 I turn them all off and the and the house stays fairly cool until 10:00 at night so that's never said so if you're no one anyone here that might have a morning U breakfast show on radio or something maybe they could um promote that I know I do that say stuff yeah definitely but it's also this is it I mean do you do you work with kind of for instance psychology psychology department here and then also the marketing people as well is that the kind of thing you're working with yeah we do and actually another really interesting area is behavioral Finance um and we have a colleague who um who part psychology part business but actually showing how important mindset is um and actually this can even make countries make better decisions so um re reciprocity between countries so Goodwill between countries can actually have a huge impact on Shifting The Net Zero transition okay final question for the audience is Young here so uh my question is uh what do you think are some of the best or most effective strategies especially for uh children to reduce uh carbon Emissions on a daily basis okay I can't help it I'm married to an architect who Advocate our thermally um you know uh uh thermally well-designed houses and structures so I think we talked about lawyers and social scientists and I guess it's a holistic approach to reducing our energy use um you know a lot of houses and a lot of buildings in Australia are not very well built you know it's cold in winter and it's very very hot in summer like the gentleman up there if you can just switch on the air con when it's hot and then when the sunsets you just switch off the airor it will stay cool the rest of the night um yeah so I guess for young people um equip yourself with whatever discipline you have and then have that attitude about you know what can I do to help the planet and you all that knowledge that you've gained today you can just you can just use it today you can go home and reduce the waste and now for given that most kids can't even afford to buy a house in Australia let alone design it thermally efficiently I will also say I guess look the pester power of kids is quite amazing so in the home is pestering parents to be you know why don't we have solar cells it's pestering people at your school you know it's talking to your principles and saying hey you know we schools are classic example we use all of our energy during the day that's when we're there we should have solar cells and the you know it's it's raising money through the school to try and do that kind of stuff and then also it's the power of kids in actually campaigning and putting your look in the end you know we can do a lot ourselves to do things and reduce our carbon footprint but as a kid yourself your power long term is going to be campaigning and voting and changing the perspective in the community and that's going to be where your power comes from as well cool thank you everyone uh great to have you all here great questions we've gone a bit over time but it was such a great session we needed to thank you again to all of our panel thanks to the great audience thanks for coming in along 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