It’s been a while since my last post so here’s a quick summary:

The Commonwealth Government’s new Climate Ready grants scheme was introduced in July. It aims to give companies matching funding to cover R&D, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation for processes, products or services which address the effects of climate change.

I’ve been preparing an application based on my project to develop software called Rocksolver which will mimic the way a stone mason builds a dry stone wall by doing the hard 3D geometric manipulations. In the application my focus is on demonstrating that the software will make an industrial process more efficient by allowing the builders of sea walls, for instance, to use unprocessed rock instead of pre-cast concrete blocks. Weight-for-weight, unprocessed rock used as a building material produces 10% the greenhouse gas emissions of concrete, hence my attempt to get Climate Ready funding. I missed the first round of funding and the second round closes soon.

Last week I submitted my draft Climate Ready application to AusIndustry to get their feedback. It looks like the AusIndustry people are the gate-keepers who filter the applications so the final selection committee only sees the stuff that looks like it might have a chance. I received the feedback this week and it’s reasonably detailed, fair and thankfully won’t require me to do too much more work. Mostly they’ve picked me up on the places where I haven’t quoted sources of technical information, which is fair enough. I’ve got until the 26^th November to respond to the feedback, gather all the remaining required documentation (a letter from an accountant saying the company can match funding, proof of ownership of IP, etc) and submit the final application to be eligible for the 2^nd round of funding.

The process so far has been time consuming but the application and AusIndustry’s feedback have certainly made me focus on the hard realities of commercialisation.