21 December 2023, Sydney –This year has seen a momentous shift in the climate landscape globally and within Australia. With Australia committing to new, more ambitious emissions targets and pushing to take a leadership position at COP31, there is renewed optimism and fertility around ambitious climate projects.

On the other side of the coin, as we emerge from a winter in which record high temperatures were set in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart and prepare ourselves for a significant bushfire season, the task before us pulls into ever clearer focus.

The time for tinkering at the margins is well and truly over. What is needed is transformational, systemic change.

As Climate-KIC Australia enters its sixth year of operation, we move into a new strategic period, as defined in our 2022-25 Strategy Climate Action through Systems Innovation. The focus of this strategy is harnessing opportunities to scale our impact. In it, we explicitly step into our role as the orchestrator of the collaborations that are necessary to reshape systems to deliver transformational climate impact.

This year was characterised by a sharpening of focus – around doing systems innovation, around acting on levers of change, around scaling our impact.

This focus was formalised through our new strategy, Climate Action through Systems Innovation. This sets the stage for our approach to climate action until 2025, with a renewed mission to inspire and enable climate action through systems change. This strategy acknowledges the growing demand for coordinated climate efforts to address the urgency of the global climate crisis.

The strategy emphasises the importance of coordinated collaborative efforts to act on systems to achieve sustainable climate impact. It underlines our role as orchestrator of complex collaborations that drive transformative systems innovation. It also places at its heart our systems innovation framework, which provides the scaffolding for working together on systems in a structured and methodical way.

On the back of releasing our new strategy, Climate-KIC Australia celebrated its fifth anniversary in November 2022. This event served as both a celebration and a reflection on the progress made during the past five years. In a world marked by escalating climate-related disasters and geopolitical instability, it was evident that collaboration and innovation have been the driving forces behind impactful change.

The celebration reaffirmed Climate-KIC Australia’s commitment to a systems innovation approach, grounded in learning by doing. As we move forward, the organisation’s focus remains on effectively transforming systems at scale, with gratitude for the trust and support of our collaboration network.

The year was also marked by project launches such as Climate-Kickstarter that significantly increased the impact potential of our portfolio.

In February 2023, Climate-KIC and several universities worked together on establishment activities to support the formal launch of the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub. This initiative is designed to mobilise capital, industry expertise, and talent to expedite decarbonisation in New South Wales across three key networks, electrification and energy systems, sustainable primary industries, and the development of sustainable power fuels including hydrogen. The aim is to coordinate and align efforts across sectors, driving change and innovation to decarbonise New South Wales effectively.

Our 2022-2023 highlights reflect the power of collaboration, innovation, and working across systems to catalyse meaningful climate impact.

As we look to the future, the focus remains on building new collaborative projects and portfolios, diversifying and solidifying our collaboration network, and mainstreaming systems innovation processes throughout our portfolio. Guiding all our activities and collaborations is our vision for a climate positive, resilient, regenerative and thriving Australia for all.