A2EP Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Jon Jutsen

On the first night of the Australasian Renewable Heat Conference, we were excited to present the Renewable Heat Awards and also to present a special A2EP Lifetime Achievement Award to Jonathan Jutsen!

Jon has a long track record as a pioneer and in the sustainable energy space, establishing and leading a number of organisations which have helped drive energy efficiency, productivity and the clean energy transition, including Energetics (now ERM Energetics), the RACE for 2030 Cooperative Research Centre and even the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity!

In presenting Jon's award, A2EP CEO Jarrod Leak summed up Jon's impact:

"This person has been involved with energy efficiency and energy productivity for over forty years. He has had so many iconic roles that trying to keep this award anonymous till the end of the speech is virtually impossible.

Jon Jutsen or JJ.

He founded Energetics back in 1984, when almost nobody in this country was thinking seriously about the demand side of energy. He founded A2EP and was my predecessor in this role. And he established Australia's largest ever cooperative research centre, RACE for 2030. On paper, that's a career.

But a résumé isn't why we're giving him this award.

We're giving it to him because of the impact he has on the people around him — and because he has a habit of seeing around corners the rest of us haven't got to yet.

That's not a throwaway line. In 2017, Jon co-authored one of the first publications anywhere in the world on high temperature heat pumps and renewable heating options — years before this was a mainstream conversation in this country or globally. Then in 2019, he kicked off the very first round of renewable heating feasibility studies, the ones that laid the foundations for A2EP's knowledge base in renewable heating.

If you trace the line back far enough, this conference exists because Jon started asking these questions before anyone else thought to.

He's usually two or three steps ahead of where the rest of us are standing. He's a force for good, a catalyst for positive change.

He does the same thing with people that he does with technology.

I'll tell you my version of it — because I think a lot of you could tell the same story with different details. Jon convinced me to sign up Alfa Laval as a member to A2EP. Then he suggested I become a director. Then, when I was at a point in my career where I wanted to make a bigger difference to climate change, he told me to put my hand up for the CEO role.

I don't know that I'd have made that jump without that nudge.

And I don't think I'm special in that story. He saw something in me. He's seen it in many of you. He's built an entire sector out of seeing it in people.

That's a rarer skill than any of the technical achievements. Plenty of people can start a consultancy or sit on a board. Fewer people spend forty years instigating — in technology, in institutions, and in the people around them — and stay two steps ahead the whole time.

So tonight isn't really about looking backward at what Jon built.

It's about naming what he's given so many of us the courage to build ourselves — including this very conference, one more thing he started before the rest of us caught up.

Jon — thank you. For Energetics. For A2EP. For RACE for 2030.

And more than any of that — for the number of us in this room who are here, doing this work, because at some point, you told us we should be.

Jon didn't just build this sector. He built the people in this room who are going to carry it forward without him having to ask.

Please join me in recognising Jon Jutsen with A2EP's Lifetime Achievement Award."

Congratulations Jon - here's to you continuing to achievement for many years to come!