Opening address
by Dr Jim Peacock

I welcome you to this Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of Science. Right from its first year the Academy has arranged a Symposium as part of its Annual General Meeting, and we have always tried to have the Symposium on a scientific topic of contemporary significance. At the very first Annual General Meeting, in 1955, the topic was ‘The permeability of living membranes’. That was organised by Jack Eccles, of the John Curtin School for Medical Research, who later received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

The topics for the symposia are selected by the Council, after they have received suggestions from the Fellowship, and usually we try to alternate between biological and physical science topics. Last year the topic that was considered was ‘Recent advances in stem cell sciences and therapies’, and it was an absolutely great Symposium – very pertinent to matters under consideration in Australia and around the world. And that is a good descriptor for this Symposium, ‘Science on the way to the hydrogen economy’.

In Australia, as all around the world, governments and the people are concerned about sources of energy. And they have concerns for one or more or many different reasons. I suppose that for the people of Australia one of the most prevalent or major concerns at the moment is the association in their minds between the production of energy and global change in climate. This I think has cultured a situation in Australia where we are again beginning to think about and be ready to discuss such things as nuclear based energy, which has long been emotionally off the scale in Australia.

But another topic which I think at least some of the public are aware of and think fondly about is the topic we have today. Many of the public won’t have heard of it, and one of the main things that we think the Academy should do, if it can find the way to do so, is to discuss this topic in its reality, where it is, and what it might mean in the portfolio of energy sources in the future.

The thought of having sunlight converted into electricity, and that electricity being used in a process of electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water, is one of the most perfect science conceptions one could have. But the challenges to that vision of such a very environmentally clean source of energy are really formidable. And many people, many scientists, I think, are still pretty cynical about this as a possibility, even in the longer time scale.

I think we will be in a good position today to make our own assessments, because we have a wonderful set of speakers around the topics, which should enable us to make up our minds about some things. People remember that there was a certain Biblical story which is something like the production of something valuable from water, and I guess that might be adding to the cynicism.

At any rate, we expect this Symposium to make an important contribution to our knowledge, and I think those of us who are here today are very lucky for that. It will help in Australia over the next year or two, when I think we are going to have a lot of consideration about that portfolio of energy sources and the time scale in which the various components might enter into consideration.

I want to thank the Symposium sponsors – CSIRO’s Energy Transformed National Research Flagship – and I also want to thank the Australian Research Council, the NHMRC, various research institutions and education jurisdictions in Australia, and also some Fellows of the Academy who have helped fund this Symposium. Some of those sponsors have particularly made it possible for teachers and young scientists, early career researchers, to attend this AGM, and I understand that the science teachers prepared themselves for today’s Symposium by participating yesterday in a special session on global change with Professor Will Steffen, from the ANU.

I am going to hand over to Michael Barber, the Symposium convenor. I congratulate you, Michael, and your committee, for lining the speakers for today in what promises to be a very interesting Symposium.

I would just like to offer a very special welcome to George Crabtree, from Argonne, who has come a long way to talk to us. I think he and the other speakers will give us a treat today.