From a slow start, Australians now ‘get’ the green narrative

The Australian

By HELEN TRINCA

Heidi Hauf used to be a soldier. The Duntroon graduate served as an officer in the Intelligence Corps from 2001 to 2005. And it was in the Asia-Pacific that she became aware of “unsustainable development” – anything from poor governance and the bad use of resources to the impacts of a changing climate as a result of human activity.

“I started from then on carving out a sustainability career in a zig-zag way,” says Hauf, who has just stepped down as regional sustainability lead at Boeing.

“A lot of my time after the army was spent in the UK because Australia wasn’t a really mature place for conversations around sustainability at that time,” she says. “I did strategy and policy work over there, as well as bringing together collaborations around some really tricky areas of sustainability, like energy and health and food.”

In 2018 Hauf was appointed as chief of staff, Boeing Defence Australia, and in 2020 moved to the company’s sustainability practice, focusing on how its products could be fuelled with low greenhouse gas impact.

“We don’t have any commercially viable technologies for long-haul flights. Hydrogen and electrification are really promising for short-haul and maybe regional flights but nothing is feasible right now for long-haul flights. We need to develop renewable fuels to tackle that,” she says.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) lacks the economies of scale as that of fossil fuels and involves a more complex energy conversion process.

“The only place we see stuff being made at the moment is where there’s an ecosystem that incentivises it, policies that make it favourable for low-carbon fuels to be competitive in the market,” says Hauf. “A good example is California where there’s a low-carbon fuel standard and tax credits for blended fuels, and some stability around policy so that investors feel comfortable investing in these refineries and making long-term investments.”

Hauf recently worked with CSIRO senior manager Max Temminghoff, to develop a roadmap for the development of a SAF industry here. The CSIRO/Boeing project suggests that with domestic demand for jet fuel expected to increase by 75 per cent by 2050 there’s an opportunity to grow a domestic alternative fuel industry.

Their work has led to both being included in The Australian’s The Green List: The 100 Top Green Energy Players, released on Friday.

Hauf notes that with jet fuel comprising about 30 per cent of an airline’s overheads, the present high cost of SAF is significant. “The airlines that are purchasing it are purchasing it in jurisdictions where they get some kind of subsidy or where there’s a carbon tax that equalises the fuels on the market,” she says. “Even then, they only buy small amounts because there’s not much being made.”

She plans to continue working on sustainability and says she is excited about where Australia is at.

“Here in Queensland there are some really promising policy drivers around investment in renewable energy, renewable fuels and transportation.

“I also think there’s a critical change in the landscape and in society in Australia. People are expecting more, they understand the consequences of climate change, so I am really excited about what businesses are going to be able to step up and do.

“In a lot of jurisdictions that’s with government in public-private partnerships, and that’s where I want to continue working, on collaborations that bring business and government together for strategic outcomes.”

The biggest change she has seen in the area is the involvement of the finance sector.

“When I started 20 years ago, there were some fantastic initiatives around green bonds and driving financial outcomes for social and environmental benefit, but the lack of urgency globally means that climate change is hitting our infrastructure and our business supply chains, and that’s hitting investors’ dividends,” Hauf says. “So the risks associated with inaction on climate change are driving financiers to understand how their portfolio of companies is performing, and assessing and dealing with the risk – and that’s changing business. I see finance really driving some of the action around climate change.”

So, does she have a favourite alternative energy source? “Solar is just so accessible and we’ve been able to bring down the technology costs so much. We’re able to connect batteries and renewable energy sources so that it can be variable and it still works for us. I love the idea of wave and tidal energy and solar and wind,” she says.

“I guess my favourite thing about renewable energy as a whole is that diversity; it’s not one silver bullet. It’s the combination of different renewable energy sources that will provide us with what we need in the future.”