Australia 4.0

The Australia 4.0 discussion series and summit are designed to open the door to substantial innovation and business opportunities throughout the Australian ICT sector. These activities will explore the profound changes required of the Australian electricity system to realise a Net Zero Australia. That outcome demands significant collaboration between the energy and ICT sectors.

 

Australia 4.0 is a Pearcey Foundation thought leadership initiative to identify and discuss the challenges and opportunities of a digital and data enabled transformation of the electricity sector to Australia Net Zero.

Pearcey national discussions focus on areas where ICT can have a major impact on the national economy. Australia 3.0 focussed on: Mining, Infrastructure, Health and Government Services. Pearcey seeks to collaborate with other industry associations and groupings to ensure diversified views and opinions are canvassed and embraced.

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A4.0 Topics

Through a series of online discussions led by experts and covering six areas, Australia 4.0 will endeavour to identify the key issues/obstacles to ensuring a ‘new’ electricity system is fit for purpose as we migrate to net zero emissions. Topics proposed include:

  • Overview
  • Future grid
  • Network intelligence
  • Energy resilience
  • Consumer grid
  • Critical digital technologies

While the energy transition is a diverse and complex matter, each discussion topic will be used to provide focus, to clearly articulate the data and digitalisation challenges confronting success in reaching a net zero electricity system.

These will be moderated Zoom meetings where panellists and audience are drawn from the ICT sector, the Energy and Power industries, regulators, government, researchers, etc. Our hope is that shared understanding and cross disciplinary thinking will help each participant identify opportunities for policy, technology, innovation and commercialisation.

Summit

On 31st October 2023, a half-day meeting will be held to summarise the findings arising from the discussions and to ratify a communiqué that clarifies the criticality of the challenges identified and to highlight the opportunities for the ICT sector. A group of individuals have identified and agreed to collaborate based on their experience and expertise to prepare the communiqué and offer suggestions and recommendations to assist government and industry develop policies and strategies to improve upon current plans for the Australian ICT sector to enable this complex transformation.

A4.0 Aims

The Australia 4.0 proposition is to catalyse ideas from the latest thinking about how ICT can help address the critical challenges that confront our nation. Digital technologies are the horizontal enabling factor that underpins most, if not all, elements of achieving higher productivity in our national economy. Shifts to open data and calls for inclusive development challenge us to deliver bold solutions for the future prosperity of Australia.

The focus is on developing new, innovative ideas to harness technology to help our nation migrate to a Net Zero electricity sector. In the process, we hope to help our industries adapt those ideas to enhance their success in global competition. With clarity about the innovation required and the commercial opportunities our governments can make better informed, evidence-based policy and regulation decisions.


For Australia to maintain its global competitiveness, and thereby create the high-value jobs of the future for its people, it must be a leader in the creation, nurturing and adoption of innovation of high productivity solutions to key economic, societal and environmental challenges.

Across all sectors, jobs will need the right skills for the information age. Harnessing our national characteristics to sustain and improve our standard of living will necessarily involve exploiting new technologies.

The Australia 4.0 process aims to play a significant part in the ecosystem looking to ensure that we take advantage of the step change that is required to prosper in the 21st century.

Coming soon: registration for Australia 4.0