Business leaders gather to discuss multi-billion dollar climate change response opportunities
Hundreds of business people are being brought together in Auckland on August 18 to discuss new technology and investment opportunities which could earn New Zealand billions of dollars as the world responds to climate change.
The New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development is staging a "Clean Billions" CEO breakfast and symposium, bringing together New Zealand clean technology developers, major investors from New Zealand and overseas, and policy and other decision makers.
The symposium is a curtain raiser for the 4th Australia and New Zealand Business and Climate Change conference starting later the same day at Sky City convention centre.
The chair of the Tindall Foundation, Stephen Tindall, will speak at the Clean Billions Breakfast on his new-technology investment experience, and release a report he had prepared for him when he was about to become chair of the Climate Change Leadership Forum, on opportunities arising from emissions trading.
International speakers include:
• the chair of Eco2, David Williams, of Wales, who is leading his firm into four hundred million pounds of new investment in UK renewable energy projects
• David Milroy, chairman and chief executive of Hong Kong-based Pure Power Global, which builds, creates, owns and operates a global network of renewable energy businesses, including wind and biomass. Pure Power is an investor in the breakthrough New Zealand technology owned by Aquaflow – which can create clean biofuel using algae in sewage ponds
Other speakers include:
• former research scientist, professor and "energy evangelist" Dr James Watson, a former managing director of Bio Joule Limited, which led the development of lignocellulosic process to product bio ethanol and other high-value by products
• Mark Aspin, Manager of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, leading a major New Zealand effort to find ways to reduce emissions from ruminant farm animals
• Brian Mayo-Smith of BDP Spicers and new technology investor company K1W1
• Stuart McKenzie of Endeavour Capital
• Nick Gerritsen, Director of Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation
• Nick Eady, director of Crest Energy, planning a major investment in wave energy
• Sean Simpson, founder of Lanzatech, which has invited a process to turn some types of industrial emissions into bio fuel
• Trevor Stuthridge, General Manager of Sustainable Design.
David Clarke, director of Cranleigh Merchant Bankers, will join Stephen Tindall in addressing questions at the Clean Billion breakfast.
Business Council Chief Executive Peter Neilson, says stunning new technology developed, and likely to be developed in New Zealand, to help firms lower emissions and address climate change, could earn billions in export earnings for the country.
The Clean Billions breakfast and half day symposium will look at the issues facing clean tech developers, what's stopping their rapid global commercialisation, and what investors here and internationally expect in order to back the major new industries.
"The world is moving to a low-carbon economy. New Zealand is a source of low-carbon innovation. We expect the country will make billions from this if it can rapidly commercialise the new technology now being developed.
The Clean Billions breakfast and symposium programme is available here http://www.nzbcsd.org.nz/publicevent.asp?EventID=568