There Will Be Dancing
Courage, care, and climate leadership worth dancing for.
There Will Be Dancing is a podcast from Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia (WELA), amplifying the voices and leadership of women and gender-diverse changemakers working for our climate and environment.
Taking its name from the idea that movements for change must leave room for joy, the podcast weaves together personal stories, creative contributions, and thoughtful conversations to show that leadership can be hopeful, collaborative, and deeply human.
Across each episode, you’ll hear from experienced leaders and emerging voices challenging outdated norms and creating new pathways for climate and environmental action.
There Will Be Dancing
A Solar-Powered Transition Needs People Too with Dr. Nicole Kuepper-Russell
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What does it mean to stay radically optimistic about a technology that the world keeps refusing to adopt fast enough? How do you keep faith with democracy when it seems to be failing to meet the moment? And what would it actually look like to build a clean energy future that was genuinely designed for everyone?
In this episode of There Will Be Dancing, Victoria, Odette and Sanaya sit down with Dr Nicole Kuepper-Russell, PhD solar scientist, Chief Strategy Officer at clean energy company 5B, and - in her day job - Sanaya's boss. Nicole has spent more than two decades at the frontier of solar energy. She has watched the cost of solar fall from $8 a watt to $0.10 and has never stopped being astonished by it.
Together they explore what it really takes to drive the clean energy transition at the pace and scale we need. Nicole reflects on how her conviction has shifted over the years: from believing that if you just made the technology cheap enough the world would adopt it, to understanding that technology is a vehicle for change but the people campaigning behind it are the engine.
This episode also features a powerful audio contribution from Tegan Lerm, founder and CEO of Project Planet, who reflects on five years of rethinking what technology can and cannot do for climate advocacy. Tegan's Build a Ballot tool reached almost 600,000 Australians during the 2025 federal election, spreading largely by word of mouth. Her big insight is radical in its simplicity: people already care about climate change but are lacking the tools and experiences that help them act on it.
We hope this episode leaves you a little more excited about what is possible, a little more honest with yourself about what the transition will ask of us, and a little more convinced that radical optimism might be one of the most strategic things any of us can bring to this work. And, because Nicole has been dancing since she was five and did jazz ballet until she was 21, we hope you also leave it ready to dance.
Learn more about Dr Nicole Cooper Russell and 5B's large-scale solar work at https://5b.co/
Discover Tegan Lerm's climate tech work and learn more about Project Planet at https://www.projectplanet.org.au/
Try Build a Ballot at https://www.buildaballot.org.au/
Our Hosts:
- Victoria McKenzie-McHarg (CEO, WELA) - A strategic leader with decades of experience in climate and environmental advocacy.
- Odette Barry (Founder, Odette & Co) - A storyteller and PR expert teaching changemakers how to tell their story.
- Sanaya Khisty (Head of Strategy and Government Relations, 5B) - A policy and advocacy leader working in clean tech on climate solutions.
Follow us on socials (@therewillbedancingpod):
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Want to learn more about WELA? Visit wela.org.au and find us on Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode is proudly supported by Women's Agenda, helping to amplify essential conversations at the intersection of environment, gender, and leadership.
Welcome to They Will Be Dancing, a podcast that amplifies the voices of women and gender-diverse change makers protecting our environment and climate. Early 20th century political activist Emma Goldman once said, if I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. And we use this to remind ourselves, and you, our dear listener, that embracing joy amidst the turbulence of change making takes real courage and commitment. So let's have some fun. We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional custodians and storytellers of these lands. And pay special recognition for the Bungelung Nations and Wurundjeri Country where this podcast is created. This podcast is by Women's Environmental Leadership Australia. And our thanks to Women's Agenda for supporting these essential conversations about the environment, gender, and leadership.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to another episode of There Will Be Dancing. I'm your host, Sanaya Kisty. And as always, I'm joined by my co-hosts, Odette Barry and Victoria McKenzie Gencag. How are you both this week? Hello. Hello, hello.
SPEAKER_04I'm very good, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, Odette, I have been meaning to ask you the federal budget was landed uh a couple of weeks ago, and there has been a lot of responses coming from the startup community and from founders. You're a founder. I am very curious about what you've made of the budget, but also the response to it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, um, I will preface this by saying I am not an economist or a budget nerd. I'm a step back from that and an observer of the commentary of it more than anything. Um, I feel like probably one of the most frustrating things that I found in the commentary is seeing the narrative from the entrepreneurship community that, you know, there's it's completely unfair, that there's no um thought to the business community in the budget. And I think the thing that is is forgotten in these conversations is the business environment that our businesses lay the foundations on and a really robust infrastructure of um, you know, roads that we can drive our products on, that we have um aged care and childcare that um services that that allow us to have workers that can even come to work in our businesses. And I I think I find that really icky and infuriating. Um, and I'd like to see more conversations because I don't really feel like I've seen them in the business um pages responding to the budget.
SPEAKER_01I guess I've been a little bit surprised that that's where the conversation has gone. And maybe I shouldn't have been because there was an article in the AFR a couple of days before the budget that seemed to be taking it there. But I yeah, I guess I have been a bit surprised just because the original framing and intent behind the budget was we want to even the playing field for wage-earning workers. Um, and it sort of that message has really gotten lost. And I I like I'm not saying yeah, and I mean, I like I I don't think that there is anything wrong with someone who is saying I'm taking this massive risk in starting a business and I want to be rewarded for it. I totally get that. And I also understand that it's can be really hard to kind of look at the operating environment that you've been in for most of your career and say, oh, it's the rules have shifted, and be very uncertain and frightened about that. But also, we've been talking a lot lately in the country about the need for reform, and people there are there are people that have to make compromises for that, uh, for the system to work as a whole. And the system is clearly not working for many people right now and hasn't been for a long time.
SPEAKER_02So I yeah, also most businesses won't be impacted. Most businesses, it's only really um very wealthy um top-tier businesses that will be in any way impacted by this. And that's not the message that's getting through. And of course, if you don't have money to be using, you can't shape the kind of future that we need or invest in those services. And the one thing that was not invested in was the environment. Again, we have continued to see a huge missed opportunity to invest in nature, invest in the future, invest in disaster resilience or adaptation or any of the things that are seriously going to uh impact on the business environment we operate in for the next 30 years.
SPEAKER_01Well, that was gonna be my next question to you, Vic. What's your take from the environment movement kind of perspective? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's it's a missed opportunity. And it seems like every year we come back and say it again, another missed opportunity, another um waste, and likewise a wasted opportunity not to be taxing our most polluting uh fossil fuel companies appropriately, and instead continuing to provide subsidies. At what point do we take the opportunities when we only have so many years left to really address this crisis?
SPEAKER_04Um rather than that. I feel like the the momentum behind the taxing polluters um within the pre-budget campaign was probably the biggest cut through I've ever seen for that narrative. Um, and I feel like hopeful that the momentum stays behind that conversation in the years to come, that that stays within the zeitgeist and and something that we collectively care about.
SPEAKER_01Totally. And at a time when uh we're not kind of negotiating the various things all around Asia that would potentially be affected by some kind of super profits gas tax. I I totally agree. I I definitely think there is a pathway now for that to really happen.
SPEAKER_02I think there's a pathway for it to happen. I do think we have to be a little bit cautious where that kind of superprofits tax is not actually the ultimate solution. It's a step. The ultimate solution is to get rid of polluting gas and replace it with the kind of clean renewables that we need that are actually going to be part of our future. So I do get a little bit of a. Completely, completely. And as long as we're telling both sides of that story, um, but I think sometimes that other part of the story can go missing uh in the narrative.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And on the note of more clean renewables, I think it's time we get into the topic of today's episode.
SPEAKER_04She's smooth, this one. She's smooth.
SPEAKER_01So in one of our earlier episodes, we had on the pod Kelly O'Shaughnessy, who was the um outgoing CEO of the Australian Conservation Foundation and one of Victoria's former bosses. On the pod today, we're actually joined by Dr. Nicole Cooper Russell, who happens to be my current boss. Beyond being a truly wonderful human being to work for, Nicole is also the perfect guest for us to talk to today about our theme, which is technology as a vehicle for change. But before we get to our conversation with Nicole, it's time again for our fortnightly audio contribution from you, our community. This week, our audio contribution comes from Tegan Lerm, a climate activist, communication specialist, and social media strategist who is also the founder and CEO of Project Planet.
SPEAKER_00I'm Tegan Lerm, and I'm the CEO of an organization called Project Planet, and I live on the beautiful lands of the Warundry people. Working in climate advocacy over the last five years has completely changed how I think about technology as a tool for change. Five years ago, I genuinely believed social media was going to democratize climate action through information. I thought that if I could just create the perfect piece of content, I could inspire people to act. And at the time that belief did make sense. Social media still felt optimistic. Organic reach was strong. Platforms were awarded charitable educational content. And for a lot of people working in advocacy, it felt like technology had finally given people like us the ability to shape public conversation at scale. You didn't need a newsroom, you didn't need a political party, you just needed a phone and something important to say. And it worked. People signed petitions, attended rallies, donated. But over time, especially in the last two years, I've watched the internet rapidly change. Algorithms, platforms, how people behave online, it's all changed so much. The same posts that once spread organically stopped reaching people. Content became more competitive, more rage-baity, more exhausting. And attention became something that platforms extracted and monetized way more aggressively. I've watched a lot of mission-driven organizations panic because so much of our strategies have been built around the assumption that if we just create good content, technology will distribute it for us. I think something else has been happening at the same time too. I think many of us misunderstood what people, regular people, actually needed. Because the issue was never that people didn't care. I think people care deeply about climate change and about nature. But I think that they're incredibly overwhelmed by the cost of living pressures, by climate disasters, by the constant information that they're getting through their phones. And when people are overwhelmed, another urgent post telling them to take action just doesn't hit the same way anymore. So it's really changed how I think about technology's role in change. And now I'm I'm much more interested in technology's capacity to enable participation. At Project Planet, we've started designing campaigns and digital tools around moments when public attention already exists, like elections and climate disasters, instead of trying to force engagement every day. Because in those moments, people are already asking themselves, what can I do? How can I do this better? And technology can either make those questions feel overwhelming or can help people take action and make action feel possible. It's that shift in thinking that led us to create Build a Ballot. We designed it around voting because voting is already something that every Australian has to do. We weren't asking people to become activists or become policy experts. We were just using technology in a smart way to lower the barrier to participation in a moment that already exists in people's lives. And it really cut through. During the 2025 federal election, almost 600,000 people used Builder Ballot. And it spread pretty much organically across the country, largely due to word of mouth. I think the reason it resonated wasn't because it persuaded people to care about climate or politics. It was because it helped people act on values that they already held in a way that felt accessible and manageable. And the experience of running that campaign really clarified something for me. Social media might have been the defining technology for climate engagement five years ago, but it's not anymore. And we need to evolve with the technologies shaping how people actually engage with the world. That means the climate movement needs to learn from the people who are designing digital products and platforms that we all use every day, the people who understand how to reduce friction, how to shape behavior, and how to make participation feel intuitive. Because from where I'm sitting, it feels like climate organizations are still communicating, like awareness is the problem. But we know that most people care. The challenge now is building the technologies and experiences that help people act on that care. And I think that's where technology becomes genuinely powerful, not just when it captures attention, but when it helps turn that attention into action.
SPEAKER_04It is ridiculous the state of cut-through with communication these days.
SPEAKER_02I really liked how honest she was about that. Like about the and and that we have got to recognize the tools that were there that just don't serve us. Because you're right, Odette, it's really hard. Um and running a snore not-for-profit is really hard to um be investing and growing and flexing and changing. But it's also shocking how few groups and organizations, and I don't think that's just enough-for-profit, I think more broadly, uh, are able to pivot effectively. And I think it's we haven't even fully internalized what the work is that we're trying to do here. And that's really interesting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, to go from being creating social media content to building tech tools that engage that help people engage with an issue, that's not even, you know, moving from copywriting to video editing. That's like a development user experience, like uh entirely different skill set.
SPEAKER_01And that that point you made, Vik about like what we're trying to do here. I really liked how Tegan said, you know, now we're we're centering this on moments where people are looking for what can I do rather than just bombarding the everyday. Like it's such it's such a thoughtful use of the technology for a purpose.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I I it's interesting c thinking about like that awareness conversation through to building tools to engage. Like I think one of the frustrations I hear from a lot of organizations is they still feel like they need awareness, but actually nobody's going to engage if they come at them without a solution. So that that you know, what you have to bring to the table as an organization is end-to-end. You can't just educate them about the issue. You have to help people do something with that energy and that knowledge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It's a classic engagement pathway challenge. I don't know that that challenge is necessarily unique to the digital age. I think that's part of what we've been dealing with. And it's uh what I really like about this though is just the acknowledgement of this is kind of the job. Like you we've got to be thinking much more creatively about digital tools and how we're using them and what are our our models of engagement. Um, and that's social change, right? Like, you know, we do what's required. Here, the landscape has shifted. Let's get on it. And I just love how on the front foot she's been. It's exciting.
SPEAKER_01And I I really like the juxtaposition of this piece in to the conversation we're gonna have with Nicole because two very different technologies itself and ways about thinking about them and how they serve a social purpose.
SPEAKER_04And two incredibly clever and exciting humans to hit. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So, in addition to being my boss, Nicole has a PhD in solar cell devices and has been putting her industry expertise to good use at 5B. We are an Australian company that designs and manufactures an innovative large-scale solar solution. Nicole's been an executive at 5B for more than five years, leading strategy, corporate affairs, and HR. But before joining 5B, she spent 10 years working with management consulting company Bain, working primarily in the energy and industrial sectors, making her a perfect guest to talk to about this industry today. We are delighted to have you join us, Nicole. Welcome. Thank you. Delighted to be here. You have spent a large part of your career working in the solar industry and more broadly in the energy industry. What was it that led you there?
SPEAKER_03I love this question. Um yeah, so I was eight, uh, and I was super nerdy as a kid. I used to get all sorts of nerdy presents for Christmas and my birthday and stuff. So that was always great.
SPEAKER_04But what hang on, hang on, hang on. You can't drop that without saying what an example of that is.
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, this is a good example. So when I was eight, I got a solar car kit. Um, you know, like a little solar solid example of solar. Solid example, yeah, exactly. There's all like telescopes and anyway, like I had all the bug catching, all of the things. I was like pretty, pretty into all the nerdy stuff, um, obsessed with the periodic table. Uh so I got this solar car kit, and I just remember using it and being like, but but but what how? The sun is making it drive. I don't understand. It's like, there's no battery, this doesn't make any sense. Um, and I just remember thinking that it was magical as a little eight-year-old. Um, and then as I was growing up, my my parents are both German. They studied pure maths. They're super nerdy as well, so that's great. Um, and we would spend our um our summers or or winters as it turned out to be, mostly in Germany with family. Um, and I just, as I was growing up, you'd fly into Germany and you'd fly into Australia and you'd be looking out the window and you'd be like, what are all those solar panels doing on those houses? It's really cold. I don't understand. There's snow, and yet I see all these solar panels, and then I'd land into Australia and I'd see none. Um, and I was really confused by that. And my grandparents had like seven different mechanisms for sorting your rubbish. Um, and they were super conscious of waste and all of that kind of stuff. And again, in Australia, it was like maybe you recycled, maybe you didn't. It wasn't a really big deal. Uh, you know, clean up Australia was starting, but it just wasn't at all. Um, I remember learning in Germany that like the water we drank was filtered and and reused kind of seven times and being my mind being blown by that. So I think it was a really interesting um juxtaposition of two societies, one that is pretty resource constrained in terms of space and energy and stuff, and one that is not. Uh, and then I always knew I was going to study science of some description. Um, and I went to every single open day for anyone listening with, you know, kids or or even later in life, I just find open days amazing. You get to learn about all these different things people are doing and talk to people. Um, and I sat down at UNSW and I sat opposite the late Professor Stuart Wenham, who was, you know, advertising his photovoltaic and solar energy engineering degree uh that 20 students had ever done, you know. Um, and and I was like, what? I sat down and I stood up an hour later. Uh, and I was just like mesmerized. This is, you know, help me a long time ago, over 20 years ago, and he was there going, you know, solar's gonna be the future, it's gonna be the predominant energy source in the future. We're already making so many inroads, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I can study this. This is so exciting. Uh yeah, and I enrolled. There were 20 in my year. Um, and I just loved it. I thought it was so much fun to learn about solar. Do you still have the solar car? No. No. But my parents can out. They tell the story as well.
SPEAKER_02Your university life sounds very, very different to mine. And I uh I admire it and um am a little jealous of your level of commitment. Well done you. But the industry has changed so much in 20 years since since then. What have you seen change and and how do you feel about where we're up to, where we're going?
SPEAKER_03Oh, it's just so exciting. Every time I pinch myself with like where we've got to. I still remember when I started my degree, Professor Martin Green, you know, took us in one of the first weeks, um, who's an incredible solar scientist. Um, and the cost of photovoltaic cells or panels at that point was about eight dollars a watt. Um, they were very expensive. There were lots of incentives to try to get people to put them on their roofs, etc. Um, and the uptake was pretty slow. Um, and I remember him saying, imagine if we hit a dollar a watt. That would be crazy. And now we're down to like 10 cents. 10 cents a watt. And you're like, how did that even happen? Um, and it was, it was, I felt like I was right on the front line because during my PhD um at UNSW, I spent quite a lot of time in China and Taiwan helping to transfer technologies that we were working on in the lab onto full-scale production, which was just so exciting. I remember being like, I'd like to test this chemical, and it would arrive like two hours later. I was like, in Australia, that would have taken three months. Uh, just so the ability to like test and learn new concepts when you're in a production environment that is linked in to all this, all this other infrastructure in China and Taiwan felt incredible. And just to watch, um, I spent a lot of time at Suntech, which was founded by Dr. Zheng Shu, and he to kind of see the evolution of each of the solar production lines going from kind of cobbled together with secondhand equipment to like uh, you know, slightly better secondhand equipment to new equipment to more automated to more automated. And you can see the progress um literally lined up in in the different production lines, which was really cool to see. And now there's you know, dark factories with no humans and you know, highly automated, um in kind of incredible industrialization of new technologies. So, so that um yeah, I think it's it it it I would never have guessed that we would have made it to this point when I started my degree, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_04It's pretty radical to see that shift. Um, like obviously, like funding is a big and like where governments choose to invest is such a big lever. But say you had that lever of funding, whereabouts does it need to be allocated for Australia to take things to the next level?
SPEAKER_03So when it comes to government policy, in particular Australian government policy, I think it's been interesting to have looked at what I've seen work in Germany in terms of driving up demand for solar there, and then what that meant for China in terms of kind of growing supply uh really rapidly, and how both of those countries implemented policies that really supported the evolution of solar in general on a global scale. I think in Australia, what's really interesting is to look at how we drive to ultra low cost, very, very large-scale solar quite quickly, because that is what then unlocks all sorts of green industries, green energies, green hydrogen, um data centers, etc. So I think what the Australian government is doing in terms of um driving towards an ultra-low-cost at scale gender is really relevant for us in terms of the deployment and the rollout of technology uh very rapidly, as opposed to, you know, trying to compete head-on with China in terms of like the the manufacturing and the sure, we could of course it it doesn't make sense for any supply chain to be as concentrated as it is at the moment. And so that's not to say that Australia shouldn't play some role in that, but I think um it's pretty sensible to focus on areas where we can add value as a society, which is in the kind of deployment um space.
SPEAKER_02Oh, our government's doing enough now?
SPEAKER_03I think that's a um I think the government is doing a lot to support solar. I think for all of us in the climate space, the answer, especially given statistics of where we're at from a macro climate change perspective, no one's doing enough. No government is doing enough globally, because otherwise we'd be like, hey, it's all good, guys. We're on track for 1.5, nothing to see here. Everyone, pack up your books and shut down the podcast. Shut down the podcast. We don't need any of that anymore. It's like, no, macro as a society, we are failing. That's very disappointing to me. Um, because we shouldn't be failing. That's a really big thing to fail at. So I think that all governments should do more to drive the adoption and the rollout of these technologies that we know work at a much more rapid scale. That's not to say that the Australian government isn't doing a lot of really good things, but I think that there's always potential to do 10 times that if we want a chance at sticking to 1.5 degrees.
SPEAKER_02While we're on that theme, I'm wondering, you know, the Future Made in Australia package, which is uh a huge package from the Australian government to try and drive investment in new technologies and innovation and the transition from you know the polluting old technologies of the past to where we need to go in the future. Um I'm curious what you think about the Future Made in Australia package and particularly about what sorts of businesses and industries is actually going to support. And is it working? That's the other side of it.
SPEAKER_03Is it actually working? That is, yeah, that's a great question.
SPEAKER_04Um I think Nicole puts on her diplomatic public facing hat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, exactly. Um are all the initiatives working on a macro scale? I think um I think it's hard to tell yet. Uh these things tend to take time, and we we are we are starting, and that's great. I think we need to be significantly more ambitious in terms of what we want our economy to look like in the future and what kinds of jobs and what sorts of industries we would like. And I think the um the element that is that is tricky, especially in a demographic society like ours, to get right, um, is the ability to kind of mandate a blueprint or drive particular uh agendas like what you see in China, where it will be there'll be this region is now dedicated to blah, um, which then means that you've got, you know, 800 gigawatts of solar in a particular precinct, uh, and the the scale benefits that come from that. We obviously don't operate in quite the same way in Australia. Pros and cons of both models, of course.
SPEAKER_02Interestingly, though, I mean, and and typically I'd be pretty pro-democracy if I was put on the spot, just to be clear.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but it's the best of all of the terror.
SPEAKER_02Shocker, shocker. If we're just comparing the two models. But I I I I hear you on some of those challenges. I guess if we were going to get a future made in Australia that was going to work for all people and um actually support the kind of transition and the jobs that we want to see, it needs to be designed for all people. I know you've had a really um incredible career in STEM, which isn't always friendly to women, but with some of the settings we're seeing around future made in Australia, unless we have a really deliberate approach to that, there's a bit of a risk that it becomes a future made in Australia by blokes for blokes. And we need to actually think about how we're getting those broader settings to shape that community engagement. So we we see that kind of support. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that, given you have become an incredible leader in this in this space, and it's something very close to your heart.
SPEAKER_03Yes, if we talk about this a lot at fine speaker, and it's interesting, the solar space, the environmental sectors in general tend to attract significantly more women than like in my engineering degree, there was sort of 30 to 40 percent women, and we shared a lot of classes with civil engineering or mechatronic, which was significantly lower in the in the female representation. Um, so I think that that alone um is interesting. And I think we need to make sure that we can bring all people from all walks of life uh into the new future made in Australia um that is green space. What we've done at 5B is really focused on what it is that is potentially stopping um people from all walks of life to come and work with us. So one of the most interesting learnings from the last couple of years was that we significantly changed our production line to make it more ergonomically friendly. So now it really does like women and men are equal because there is no element that requires physical exertion. And so post that we've now got, I think 40% female on our production lines down in Adelaide. Um, we've also brought in lots of kind of like part-time. If you can work three shifts a week, wonderful. If you can only work afternoons, we've got two shifts a day now. So that also means that you can bring different people in from with different caregiving requirements, men and you know, people of all genders. Um, so we've done that as well, which has been really impactful. Um, not that we've solved all of the problems, but but yeah, we're trying, I guess.
SPEAKER_04Well, you can only do what you can do, but there's some pretty like significant steps that do change who can access these roles. I think um I really enjoyed reading um the article in the fin where you uh had spoken about your relationship uh with your partner and the um the three-year rotating schedule of prioritization of one another's careers. And I think the children get a say now. Yeah. But like there's these seasons of life that demand different things of our, you know, availability and how our relationships can function. I'm I'm interested because I think a lot of our listeners would be navigating similar conversations in their relationships and how they um negotiate different arrangements. Yeah, how did you navigate all of that?
SPEAKER_03Well, we have a teapot, very dedicated teapot, uh, that we sit down and we drink tea um at least once a year. This teapot is only reserved for this conversation? It's only reserved for significant conversations. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I love that idea.
SPEAKER_03If someone gets the teapot out of the cupboard, you're like, oh shit. Yeah, yeah. Joel woke me at midnight when we were living in Abu Dhabi and was like, I've made tea in the teapot. And I was like, oh God, what's happening? And I came downstairs and he said it wasn't such a big deal. He was just like, we have to go back to Australia. This is after we'd been in lockdown in Abu Dhabi for three months. It's like, I'm uh it's midnight, I'm out, we need to go back. This is too much. That is reasonable. Well reasonable. Yeah, I was ready for like something way more catastrophic. Um, so very early in our relationship, because he started, he was in Canberra and I was in Sydney. And so the, you know, within six months, it was like, where are we gonna live? Okay, well, if I'm gonna move to Canberra, then how does that work? How how do we build equality into this? Because I'm moving to Canberra. Um, and so we agreed he works in the public service, so he generally had kind of three-year postings or three-year jobs, and so we said, All right, well, for three years, your job will be the focus, and I will move to Canberra and we will do that. And then from then on, pretty much bang on, every three years we have moved somewhere for someone's career, and that person's career has taken precedent. That's not to say the other person doesn't work or doesn't do anything, it's just that they find work that fits in with the other person's career, and we make sure that that person knows that like their career takes precedent for that period of time.
SPEAKER_04And I asked a nosy question on that. What does that look like day to day in managing your lives together?
SPEAKER_03So a a good example is like when we moved to London. He got this great posting to London. So excited. Um, and I had just finished my PhD and we were it was the middle of the global crisis, and there was no sun, like no jobs in solar. I had job offers in Australia, in Spain, in Germany, in the US, in China, but I could find nothing in England, like zilch. Um so hence uh and so I I didn't work for a couple of months trying to trying to figure out what to do, uh, and was chatting to a friend, a mutual friend that we'd made in England, and he said, Well, I work for this management consulting company called Bain, kind of hire clever people. Have you heard of it? And I was like, No, have you heard of McKinsey? No. It was like totally naive. Uh and then he said, We kind of do this stuff. And I went, Okay, sounds fun. That sounds fun. Yeah, I like calculating how many golf balls fit in the 747. That'd be cool. Um, so yeah, practiced the interviews for a bit, applied to Bain and company, and got a job. And that was really exciting. But it wasn't like, you know, it was fitting into what he was doing as opposed to taking a job in Spain that would have been like incredibly logistically complicated. Um yeah, so that's an example. Worked out great. I had a great time. I have found it as a person who tends to like get very consumed in something and not really move. I have found it to be very helpful because it's forced change and it's forced me to be like, okay, well, if I'm not at UNSW anymore, I think if if it weren't like that, I'd probably would still be at UNSW, which would still be great. That would be wonderful. Uh, but I would not have led the varied life that I have. I would not have had as many um experiences.
SPEAKER_04It's funny because I feel like your um role within 5B now is almost like giving you that like movement and freedom because being in a startup, you do have to shift functions and uh you know wear all of the different hats.
SPEAKER_03All the hats. Correct. I always joke I've had seven different titles since I shot 5B. And I always are like, it doesn't really show up, whatever. Including some double-ups, many double-ups, yeah, exactly. I'm like, I'll be the CO for a while if we need one. CFOs only for two months, I'll be the CFO for a bit. Yeah, it's good. It also helps you learn which ones you don't want to be.
SPEAKER_02I guess though, that moving around internationally um is something that I've often heard of as a complaint in the solar industry because there hasn't been a strong enough industry here, you've actually had to go uh offshore, and that that's been a real problem in clean tech generally. How do you think the ecosystem is developing? And um what are those opportunities for working in STEM in Australia? And thinking of you know, the next generation who are listening to this, um, or or parents who want to, you know, get their daughters involved in STEM, is it is it a place of opportunity?
SPEAKER_03Totally different. Yeah, there's so much more. I'm not saying it is the place. Um, of course, uh, of course, there's always room for there to be more opportunity, but compared to when I started or finished, you know, my undergrad and PhD, there, you know, I'd say a hundred times as many opportunities now as there was then. Back then it was really like you could work at university, yeah, or in a consultancy, maybe. And that was kind of it. Um, if you wanted to do anything uh in the kind of industrial space or commercialization space, you pretty much had to go offshore. And that was really disappointing. Um, and so it's wonderful that through initiatives like Solar Flagship Project, Arena, you know, lots of um, lots of different funding bodies that we now have a range of companies in Australia across the value chain, uh, both in solar and renewables in general, that people can work for if they don't want to kind of stay in the academic sector, which I definitely did not. It was not a sector that um that gelled for me.
SPEAKER_02And we need it, right? Like with the scale of change we need, the scale of action and innovation we need on climate, um, getting those different voices in there seems essential.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. Yes. And I think so many people are starting. I think what's also interesting is that I've seen quite a number of my friends who had gone overseas now coming back, um, which is like a lovely, you know, thing to watch, including people who've founded companies in Singapore and then kind of got Australian funding to bring parts of that back or to trial things on um on projects in Australia. So yeah, I think lots, lots of improvement.
SPEAKER_01So that that actually kind of puts us to this question that the the theme of this episode, talking with you, is technology as a vehicle for change. And you've already kind of hit on some of those examples through what you've been talking about, but I'm very interested because you know a lot of our listeners will be more involved in sort of campaigns work, whether it's grassroots or sort of large not-for-profits. How do you see technology playing a role as a pathway to changing society?
SPEAKER_03I have changed my mind on this so fundamentally recently. Um I think as a deeply mathematical, scientific human, it has always been my conviction that technology would solve all problems. And that you just had to make solar cheap enough, and then it would magically get rolled out everywhere, and all of the other things would disappear and life would be great. Um, and then to watch that not happen has like deeply shocked me, I think. Um, because you start, you you have opposition, you have challenges, you have tariffs, you have political instability, you have all of these things that mean that this technology that we've known about, you know, we've known about it for 50 years. We've known that it was competitive kind of economically for at least 10 years. Um, and yet still there is this reluctance to roll it out at the scale and the pace that is needed. Um, and so I think I have changed my mind dramatically on the like technology will solve all the problems to technology is an incredible vehicle for change, but you need the people to campaign for it and to help. You know, this push, I was reading an article about pushback uh for a battery storage system in Victoria today. Um, and all of those sorts, I understand, I understand that. I understand that communities need to be feel listened to and included. Um, but at the same time, somehow we need to unlock the urgency around rolling out these technologies. And yes, there are risks associated with that, and yes, that's not perfect, but like how do we overcome that and come to a mutually agreeable solution that isn't, oh, whoops, actually, there's runaway climate change.
SPEAKER_04An iron fist, Nicole.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, you did, Nicole, joke before about the pros and cons of different systems, and we do see that China has um been very active in uh not always good things, um in fact some pre-terrible things, but also have been able to really mandate big industry innovations. Correct. Um, if democracies are failing to deal with this, what is the solution?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, well, it's obviously not dictatorship. This really got awkward. This feeling got really awkward. Um I think a new minister in making.
unknownExactly.
SPEAKER_03No, that's not. I think one of the things that um that ups well, so I'm gonna say the thing that upsets me, and that I think that leads to what I think can really help. And I think the thing that upsets me is that there is not enough enthusiasm and ambition as a country for what this can be. And I think we said like the tall poppy syndrome and the cutting companies down and the like as if some cable will ever happen, like all of that kind of language that we get used to in this country, um, I find deeply upsetting because I am a super optimist by nature, and I love thinking about big projects like how would you provide Singapore with 20% of their power from the Northern Territory? It's like such a cool question. Um, and having had the experience of living in so many different cultures, my husband and I were talking the other day about um the Bush Khalifa, which is remains the tallest building in the world. Um, and if you've ever had the privilege of going there and going up it, you walk through this here's Of the Birch Khalifa as you get to the lift. And the very first image that you come to is a napkin. And someone, the archite whatever, someone has drawn what they think that the napkin, what they think the Bush Khalifa is going to look like. And you're like, oh yeah, that's a cool, you know, napkin, whatever. And it was completed six years later. Six years from like this napkin to its standing. And it's because there is this real state.
SPEAKER_04They didn't have everyone in their peers going, oh yeah, as if may.
SPEAKER_03Everyone went, let's build the tallest building in the world. How do we make that happen? How do I support you? How do I, there's going to be risks and challenges. How do we think about that in a you know constructive and a creative way? And that's that that approach and that philosophy is something that I would love to see a lot more of, not just in Australia, but globally, so that we can roll out these technologies as quickly as we need to. And I don't know how I don't know how we can. Without exploiting labor force, exactly. All of those things, managing risks appropriately and ethically, but uh but still driving for that same ambition without being like, oh, I don't know if we can do it. Uh sounds hard. There's so many problems.
SPEAKER_01What do you think needs to happen to change that dynamic?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I think the question of um cultural versus kind of political elements of that is really interesting. I think the cultural element is the sort of shared purpose, excitement, energy to create a new type of economy and to be a part of this huge opportunity as opposed to like, oh not sure about that, not sure about that, stick to like the safe safe industries, safe, safe jobs, safe industries. Um, so that's the cultural lens. I think the the political or the the the economic lens is that it's really expensive to build those ecosystems and it takes a really long time. And we in general do not have a society or a culture that is very patient. Um, and so I think being able to explain that and say, like, yes, it it's we're gonna have to invest, you know, to drive the cost of solar down in our society to this, to drive the cost of wind down to this, to drive the cost of storage down to this, to drive the to drive an ecosystem that looks like this. It's gonna cost us this much money, right? But the benefit of that is going to be that we will be the most economic, best place in the world to produce green steel. And that will unlock blah for our society. And and and um I just don't think like the work that you did at Beyond Zero Emissions really helped to explain that, but I haven't seen that be picked up by the everyday person in Australia and be like, I get it, let's invest. That's a really good idea, uh, which you do see in other societies and other countries at a much larger scale. Uh and I don't think that just applies to solar. I think that applies to a whole range of industries that we have in Australia. You have to just accept, you know, if you want to lead in automation and lead in all of these fields, it's gonna cost some money. And a PR spend. And a PR spend, which is really important. How do you how do you tell the stories? How do you get people excited? And I think it's um, yeah, I I kind of I kind of when I was starting in the solar space, I remember looking for like where are the stories? Where where are the faces that I recognize? And there weren't any female, there weren't many female faces that I could look to and kind of understand. Um, you know, Muriel Watt is one of my favorite people, so she was really important to me. But as I've gone through the solar industry, it it has been really important for me to tell my story and to explain why I'm excited and to try to convey that vision. Last week I was on a you know high school panel via Zoom to like a hundred kids telling them about why they should study STEM and solar. Because I think without those stories, yeah, you don't you don't build excitement. Um, so what you guys are doing is really important.
SPEAKER_01What do you think the next 20 years of the industry looks like and what needs to happen within it from government or others within industry? Like what needs to happen?
SPEAKER_03We just we just need to roll out the solar farms really quickly, and not just the solar farms, the wind farms and the batteries and the all of all of the all of the different elements of of of that. So it becomes a challenge of execution at a very large scale. Um and that obviously, like it's a really fun challenge, I think. And some countries will do really well at that, I think. Um, and particularly countries that have really stepped back and thought through the plan. I kind of always say this, but I'm like, who's writing the Australian plan? I don't know where where is it? Where's the plan? Where's like what do I hold on to that shows me how we're gonna get to that place in 20 years? I don't see that in Australia. Um, it would be wonderful if we had that. I think that's a really important thing for uh us to work on as a society. And I think the society there's another hat for you, Nicole. There's another hat. No, I don't think I'm the right person to work on it. I'd like that is a that is a very significant task. I'm not underestimating the challenge of that task, but I think the the societies or the groups of countries that do that really well and map that out properly, um, and then of course adapt because we're gonna learn things and things are gonna get cheaper or more expensive or whatever, uh, I think they will be the ones that drive the most significant uptake of renewables. And that will then lead to this incredible. I always think about like what happened when, you know, we got um kind of unlimited Wi-Fi and what did that do to the world and your ability to consume and learn um and engage? I feel we will get that way with electrons. Um, it's just a matter of where that happens as opposed to when.
SPEAKER_01So, Nicole, the title of this podcast, uh, there will be dancing.
SPEAKER_03There'll be dancing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Tell us, do you dance? What's your most memorable dancing experience?
SPEAKER_03I love dancing. You know this. Um, my most memorable dancing experience. I started dancing when I was five, and I continued to dance in jazz ballet Steadford's until I was about 21.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I love a Stadford kid. 21 is actually no longer a kid. No, it's not a kid.
SPEAKER_03It was me as the 13-year-old. Yeah, I um I really love it.
SPEAKER_04Along with the photo of the solar car, we need some of those costumes.
SPEAKER_03Costumes were exceptional. And my husband, we've been coming out since I was about that age, and he was like, Oh, you I you still know the stiff as okay, I'll come. It was a sequence of the steadframe and the like, because I have a really big smile, um, I was only allowed to have red lipstick on like half of my lips because otherwise I look like a clown. That's so funny. There you go. But yeah, I still dance all the time. I love dancing, it's very important.
SPEAKER_02Never tempted by this Steadford though now.
SPEAKER_03Do they can you?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. Maybe you don't. I don't know. I feel like there's a master's out there. There's like gonna be a master.
SPEAKER_03There is a gap. I need to, yeah, I need to look into Steadford's for 41-year-olds. That's a good idea. Sign project.
SPEAKER_04In in between masterminding Australia's energy transition, if you could just also just get the mature age calisthenics exactly as happening.
SPEAKER_03Shall do.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much, Nicole, for joining us. Um, I have learned things that I didn't know about you, which is so surprising. I didn't know about the teapot. I can't believe I didn't know about the teapot. Um please send a photo of the teapot. It has honestly been such a joy to have you here and to have you do this with Vic and Odette. Um, I have had the best time. Thank you for coming.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to chat with you guys.
SPEAKER_01So that was Nicole.
SPEAKER_04What a bloody great human to work alongside, like the um comrade, like the energy that you would get every day having someone with that passion and aliveness in your work. Like what an absolute pleasure and treat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she's she's wonderful to work for and work with, but also just I learned so much from her. I'm constantly learning, but she's just such a good human to be working with. Like it's it's it makes it so fun. I am curious about what your reflections were because obviously I talked to Nicole about this stuff a lot. So I I know a lot of where her thinking is at in the industry, but what what was your takeaways?
SPEAKER_02I really loved her optimism about the industry and the sector and and the possibilities that it had. And we came back and had a sort of an explicit conversation about that towards the end of the conversation, where she was saying, we need more of that. But before we got to that bit, really early on, I found myself sort of sitting back going, wow, I haven't heard anyone speak with such an inspiring energy about what the opportunity is of this sector here in Australia. And it, you know, I could feel it in myself, and I was thinking, oh, I need to upgrade the way I'm talking about this as well. I um it's really important. And it it that realization, when she then commented we don't have enough of that about just how important that is in the way we see ourselves and create a vision for what's possible, um, and and then step into just creating it, it really matters.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I think that um the authoritarian um regime certainly has its benefits for outcomes, but the human cost and the um broader costs to different environmental elements that are not, you know, when maybe we're not mining for or burning fossil fuels, but all of the other fallout from it is really hard to hear, you know, because you do to to look at them one-dimensionally, it is incredible. But I don't know, I I it I found it very jarring to to celebrate in that way whilst also knowing that we have to celebrate and not tear things down. Like I'm it that felt very difficult to sit with.
SPEAKER_02I totally, totally know what you mean. And I think there's a um like how do we see where there's real action, see what it is that's enabling and driving that, but then use tools like you know, grandiose optimism as our mechanism to drive it forward. Um yeah, it's it's a potential.
SPEAKER_01But I think that that like that is such a good example of the predicament that we find ourselves in because whatever pathway we take to get to the scale of renewables that we require will include trade-offs. Yes. It's what cost are we comfortable with? Which trade-offs do we want to make? And like this this whole transition is going to involve lots of celebration for getting emissions down and lots of commiseration for things that we have to trade off and lose as a result of that. Um and that is a tension that I think makes it really hard to have honest conversations about what this is going to look like, and one of the reasons why it is so difficult to build the social license and community acceptance that is needed because it it is it's not a case of win-win-win.
SPEAKER_02I think that point really matters that there is a requirement to be intellectually honest with ourselves as well as honest with communities. A lot of the backlash we see is because of a lack of honesty and a um you know a bright siding of um of what things are going to be. And that's that's not to take away from the need for optimism in the narrative of what's possible. I think that is essential, but grounded in the realities of what are we having to choose between and what what is this gonna look like. I also don't think that's why you can't look at any one technology alone or any part one pathway alone, because if we only talk about what's it going to take to electrify, then it is pretty scary what we're gonna need, the amount of resources that are gonna be needed needed, we have to be talking about energy efficiency. We have to talk about degrowth. Ooh, you know, there's a whole range of big conversations that we need to consider if we're going to have a shot at balancing all all of the the needs.
SPEAKER_01But I think that's like a like taking it back to technology and underscoring the theme of this episode. It is really important to to think about technology exactly as that, like as a multitude of pathways. So many different technologies will unlock different things, and we can't possibly know where they're gonna land. Even Nicole talking about how they couldn't have anticipated solar getting to be as cheap as it is. Um, we don't know.
SPEAKER_04It is refreshing to hear, though, like someone working in the technology space saying that technology isn't the only answer. You know, because I feel like that has been all we've heard for a really long time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and it, yeah, it's it's I think she couldn't, she couldn't have framed that better. Well, that's another episode for us done. There will be Dancing is a podcast by Women's Environmental Leadership Australia. If you enjoyed this podcast, then please join us next time. Subscribe, share, and tell your family and friends. The links are in the show notes. Thanks to my fellow co-hosts, Victoria and Odette. And thank you to Nicole for joining us as our guests this week and Tegan for her beautiful audio contribution. Today's episode of There Will Be Dancing was produced by Matt Siegel from Green Thumb Media. Podcast theme music is by Alice Ivey. Until next time.