Australia’s energy transition is at a pivotal moment. Strategic investment to maximise the impact of research, development and demonstration (RD&D) will be essential for Australia’s energy transition. This report is designed to support constructive dialogue on the energy transition, leveraging national RD&D strengths and evolving with input from the research community and the progress of the energy transition. The report identifies RD&D opportunities to accelerate the development of low emissions technologies tailored to Australian needs.

The report explores RD&D opportunities to support the adoption of technologies that can accelerate cost-effective, low-risk and integrated technology pathways across five major sectors: electricity, low carbon fuels, transport, industry and carbon management. 14 subsectors and 43 technologies are analysed, each mapped to 18 Australian use cases. The report identifies enabling technologies and high-impact RD&D opportunities that can accelerate deployment and achieve costs, performance and safety outcomes.

The report identifies five cross-cutting RD&D themes that could help optimise efforts and enhance the feasibility, efficiency and pace of Australia's energy transition:

• tailoring solutions for Australia
• achieving and exceeding cost forecasts through RD&D
• supporting the demonstration and scale-up of technologies
• developing technology-agnostic energy efficiency solutions
• enabling adoption through interdisciplinary research.

The report argues with limited RD&D resources and many emerging low emissions technologies, Australia must strategically prioritise efforts through strong collaboration across research, government and industry to maximise national benefit.