The second of our Foresighting Forum webinars took place yesterday with over 250 energy sector leaders and decision makers.
Attendees heard from our expert panelists from The Insight Centre, AusNet Services and Essential Energy as the topic of System Resilience was explored in the context of significant bushfires and floods occurring in Australia over the past two years. You can watch a full recording by clicking on the image below.
Webinar Two: System Resilience
To begin our discussion, The Insight Centre's Nicola Hepenstall shared the findings and themes that surfaced in her East Gippsland Longitudinal Community Listening Project. Her presentation covered the challenges that the East Gippsland community faced during and after the 2020 bushfires and what those people's hopes and expectations were for how a more resilient energy system might be rebuilt.
Nicola's presentation was then followed by Thomas Hallam from AusNet services and Luke Jenner from Essential Energy, who shared how energy networks have been working to deliver and rebuild energy services in the aftermath of natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.
All presenters then joined Energy Consumers Australia CEO Lynne Gallagher in a panel discussion about system and community resilience, exploring how different organisations across disaster response, energy and other utilities can connect and cooperate to respond to community needs and 'build back better' as the frequency of Australian natural disasters increases in the future.
How can we break the shackles of conventional thinking to create a future energy system that is more local, more flexible and better able to meet changing consumer needs and expectations? How can we work across jurisdictions, organisations, roles and responsibilities to think more ambitiously — changing our ideas about what is possible to deliver something better?
View the presentation slides (PDF, 4.94MB)
