While Australia performs strongly in research quality and output, significant barriers remain in translating research into deployment, commercialisation and policy action. This report explores the factors that influence research translation in the energy transition and identifies opportunities to strengthen collaboration between researchers, funders, policymakers, industry and communities.
Drawing on international examples and analysis of the Australian innovation ecosystem, the report highlights structural barriers that slow the movement of knowledge to impact. It outlines practical recommendations to improve research translation and strengthen the connections between research priorities, funding mechanisms and real-world energy transition outcomes.
The report aims to:
- Analyse the barriers preventing energy research from translating into impact, including commercialisation, policy development and social adoption.
- Examine how collaboration between researchers, industry, government and communities can strengthen research translation pathways.
- Identify international best practice approaches that support research translation within energy innovation systems.
- Provide recommendations to improve funding structures, incentives and institutional mechanisms that enable research to influence decision-making and deployment.
Ultimately, the report seeks to ensure that Australia’s research system can support a reliable, affordable and socially equitable pathway to net zero emissions.
1. Australia produces strong research but struggles to translate it into impact
2. Multiple barriers impede the translation of energy research
3. Australia faces a funding gap between research and commercialisation
4. Humanities and social sciences research is under-prioritised
5. Effective research translation requires stronger ecosystem collaboration
6. Coordinated national structures can accelerate research translation
While net-zero emissions by 2050 is the destination for Australia’s emissions, the critical questions are how will we get there and at what rate. This is currently unclear. The Australian Energy Transition Research Plan’s first report was released in June 2021 and emphasises that the research and innovation sector will play a critical role in paving a ‘clever pathway’ for Australia to reach this target. Further, there is the opportunity to help reduce global emissions through the export of Australian research breakthroughs and by pivoting our export future towards renewable energy-intensive products.
There are three critical limbs for research and innovation to paving this pathway: (1) appropriate prioritisation of urgent and strategic research (refer to Report One) (2) the funding of that priority research and (3) the translation of this research to impact – the last being the focus of this paper. Combined, the prioritisation and translation of appropriate research can help support an Australian energy transition that efficiently and effectively addresses the energy trilemma domestically and globally, reaching net-zero emissions reliably and affordably while ensuring a fair and equitable transition.
However, various obstacles impede the flow of research to impact. While there is not much readily available literature on Australian energy research translation, there is a general understanding of some of the key barriers. This includes a lack of: appropriate funding, effective collaboration, nonacademic incentives, translation of research to policy, and engagement with research users. Importantly, building on our first report, it is clear that many research activities within the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) domains face a double dilemma: not being sufficiently prioritised or funded, and challenges in effectively communicating findings to impact.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demonstrates the strength and translational power of having a boundary organisation that sits at the interface of research and policy. While a similar international body has not been created for energy research translation, drawing on international learnings, Australia could establish a structure to improve our translational capacity, aimed at facilitating productive synergies between the three key agents of the research ecosystem: researchers, funders and research users.
Based on these findings, ACOLA makes four sets of recommendations; one that aims to improve the cohesion and information sharing with energy stakeholders through a research translation platform, and the others targeted at a different agent in the Australian research ecosystem:
- Research end-users should have access to independent, interdisciplinary and robust research summaries to guide policies and investments, and open access to the underpinning research papers and findings. They should also initiate contact with and support researchers to solve their problems collaboratively.
- Researchers should be incentivised to actively develop and pursue research translation pathways and non-academic impacts at various stages of the project’s development.
- Funders should increase the stock and flow of impactful research, through increasing targeted funding and incentives to researchers to focus on the non-academic impacts of their research
Emeritus Professor Sue Richardson
AM FASSA
Emeritus Professor Kenneth Baldwin
FTSE Emeritus Professor of Research School of Physics at The Australian National University
Distinguished Professor Fran Baum
AO FAHMS FASSAFern Beavis
