A recent Callaghan Innovation report titled NZ Climate Tech for the World has identified areas this country could excel in, with low carbon agriculture and energy production as two with the greatest potential.
The report is being used as a launch point for a NZ CleanTech Mission, an alliance between Callaghan Innovation, NZ Growth Capital Partners, the national science challenge and UniServices.
Cleantech is defined as technology that reduces or eliminates greenhouse gases (GHG) or improves the use of natural resources.
The report has compared NZ’s performance in developing such technology against other Small Advanced Economies (SAEs), defined as having a population of less than 20 million and “advanced” based on IMF criteria of per capita annual income over US$30,000.
With a number of crossovers and references to the $1.4 billion a year agritech sector, the report has placed methane vaccination, agricultural robotics, livestock breeding and digitalisation as areas the country should all be in the “advance” category.
The report found that in contrast to other wealthy, small economies like Israel and Sweden, successful NZ companies have tended to be backed individually by the Government, rather than benefiting by having the entire industry elevated through central government mandate.
Sweden, for example, has the Swedish Cleantech Initiative, and Israel the Israel Innovation Authority.
NZ has, however, proven its ability to commercialise technology, but researchers still often lack the incentives to bring new tech out of the lab and into companies.
This is an issue also identified in the agritech sector, and aimed to be addressed through the industry transformation plan released last year.
Callaghan Innovation CleanTech lead James Muir says often researchers were not fully appreciative of the commercial opportunity their work represents.
He pointed to methane mitigation, an area the rest of the world would only wake up to once the “easy” carbon emissions had been dealt with.
“And, it will be looking at the work we have been doing here for some time for solutions to their livestock methane issues,” Muir said.
The report identifies this country’s potential to leverage off low emissions research and innovation has been stymied by the relatively low levels of investment received compared to other SAEs.
As a country, NZ has a near average number of innovators (17 against average of 21) raising cleantech capital over the past decade, but they only raised $130 million against an overall SAE average of $600m.
But Muir says the main constraint in funding tended to come at the late-stage commercialisation of innovation, with a market failure in linking larger tech production companies with the innovative developers in NZ.
The work by the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre that started well ahead of other countries, offers one of the most promising cleantech opportunities through a methane vaccine.
The report cites a lack of significant involvement in innovation by domestic corporations, including Fonterra, as a brake on advancing this faster.
However, Fonterra is currently engaged in extensive trials around NZ on methane inhibitor Bovaer, while also working on KowbuchaTM cultured solutions and seaweed-based options.
In June, Fonterra’s chief scientist Dr Jeremy Hill said a methane vaccine offered huge global earning potential, thanks to the general acceptance and use of vaccines in many countries with high livestock populations, including India.
Livestock genetics as a pathway to decarbonisation are also cited as an area NZ holds a solid competitive advantage in. Commercialisation of low-methane sheep genetics is already well under way and learnings from this being applied to cattle.
Interestingly, the report suggests viewing alternative proteins as a complement, not a replacement to red meat.
It acknowledges the level of investment here in this sector is far behind the likes of the Netherlands and Israel.
Between them companies in those two countries have received $430m over 10 years, compared to a mere $6.9m for NZ innovators.
The possible loss of red meat sales to such competitors should sharpen NZ’s need to find angles to maintain traditional meat’s appeal in high income countries, including a reduced emissions footprint.
In all cases, the report recommends NZ look at working with other similar innovative regions.
Some progress has been made here, with companies including LIC working closely with peers in Ireland in advancing genetic research and innovation.
“Agricultural digitalisation” is also cited for its potential, where NZ develops a digital “stack” of technology that encompasses real-time tracking of stock and crops, management platforms and precision interventions.
At present this is limited by a lack of coordinated outward innovation to push into other countries and a lack of finance to develop hardware.
