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Energy Efficiency Council and the RACE for 2030 17 February 2021

Energy Efficiency Council and the RACE for 2030: delivering a reliable, affordable and clean energy transition

The Reliable, Affordable, Clean Energy (RACE) for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) is an industry-led research collaborative to drive energy innovation across the supply chain to deliver improved, lower cost and lower emission energy services for energy customers. RACE will increase distributed clean energy uptake by increasing load flexibility and support the growth of Australian energy technology businesses.

RACE’s research lessons will be driven into the market through market transformation programs to deliver the targets of:

  • Reducing energy costs;
  • Cutting carbon emissions; and
  • Increasing customer load flexibility to allow increased penetration of renewables in the grid and increased reliability.

RACE for 2030 has four program themes:

The Energy Efficiency Council is an active partner of the RACE for 2030 CRC, leading and supporting several program themes and opportunity assessment projects that will lay the foundation for the CRC’s research agenda over the coming decade.

This includes the RACE for Business: Flexible demand and demand control technology and development project and the RACE for Everyone: Developing the future energy workforce project. 

The Council is leading industry engagement and project management for both projects, as well as chairing and providing secretariat support for the respective Industry Reference Groups (IRG).

RACE for Business: Flexible demand and demand control technology and development

As part of the B4 flexible demand project, on Thursday 11 February, the Council hosted a project launch event that provided an overview of the work being completed and insights into the market, as well as sharing perspectives on flexible demand from the commercial building and water utility sectors.

This event enabled the project to engage with over 150 participants and has laid the foundation for further engagement through direct consultation and workshops over the coming months.

A recording of the webinar can be viewed at the link here, and a combined PDF of the speaker presentations can be found here.

This project is being led by CSIRO, with support from the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity, the Energy Efficiency Council, RMIT University and the University of Technology Sydney.

End user survey: flexible demand opportunities

A survey has been developed to gather information from electricity end users to better understand their use and potential of demand side management (DSM). This information will inform the identification and selection of flexible demand technologies for further research and development.

We welcome responses from any end users to this response and invite our members and other energy services companies to share the survey with their clients.

The survey should take 15 minutes to complete and can be accessed here.

RACE for Everyone: Developing the future energy workforce

The Council is also leading the project management and industry engagement for the E3 future energy workforce project. The project includes three work packages on:

  1. Market size, workforce and employment;
  2. New skills development; and
  3. Innovation pathways.

This project represents the largest collaboration of government and industry partners thus far seen by RACE and will galvanise the energy services industry’s trajectory for supporting Australia’s energy transition.

This project is being led by the University of Technology Sydney, with support from the Australian Power Institute, Climate-KIC Australia, the Energy Efficiency Council, EnergyLab, Monash University, Startupbootcamp and Ultima Capital Partners.

Keen to know more?

To learn more about RACE for 2030, visit racefor2030.com.au.

If you would like to find out more about the Energy Efficiency Council’s partnership with RACE for 2030, please contact Holly Taylor, Senior Manager, Industry Development at holly.taylor@eec.org.au.

If you would like to learn more about the B4 flexible demand project or the E3 future energy workforce project, please contact Kate Jennings, Senior Project Officer at kate.jennings@eec.org.au.

 

This article was originally published in the February edition of Efficiency Insight.