Interview with Christopher Lee, CEO, Climate-KIC Australia
The Climate KIC community comprises a rich diversity of expertise, skills and perspectives across our alumni, start-ups, innovation partners, advisors, and associates, all of whom contribute to our innovation capacity. This week, we speak to Christopher Lee, CEO, Climate-KIC Australia.
What’s your role?
I’m the CEO of Climate-KIC Australia and lead a growing team delivering climate change innovation across the country.
What are you working on with Climate KIC?
Climate-KIC Australia was established a year and a half ago with the co-operation of Climate KIC. We’re separate organisations but we have a very strong collaborative partnership. We’ve been supported by many people across Climate KIC in developing our programmes and projects. On the programmes side, we’ve delivered the Climathon in Australian cities, for the second year Australia is participating in the Climate Launchpad, with our partner EnergyLab we’ve established an Accelerator program that has startups in four cities, and we’ve recently completed our first Australian Journey.
Climate-KIC Australia works strategically across three areas of impact: Net-zero carbon energy, sustainable, resilient cities, and regions in transition. We also work across key enablers finance, policy, and decision making. These themes inform the focus of our work and drive the development of projects under our systemic change activities. We’ve been developing projects that link back to Climate KIC’s thematic areas and we have been establishing links to share knowledge globally.
What are three implications of this work?
Through these collaborations, we’re now building, with Climate KIC, a global platform and network of systems innovation. The next phase is the development of joint projects and the identification of ways to leverage the larger geographic spread of activity.
A key project is how we can jointly identify new funding sources and improve access to capital to drive systemic change. We’ve had the opportunity of drawing on the experience of Climate KIC and building new approaches to partnership and project development that fit the circumstances of our funding landscape and the needs of our partners.
What or who gives you hope or inspiration in the fight against climate change?
The amazing people (of all ages!) that participate in our programmes and have a passion for driving transformative change.