The Energy Institute unites energy activities across UNSW with industry, government, community stakeholders and other research institutions.

As intermediaries, our role helps ensure relevancy and impact, and enhances knowledge sharing and increased funding.

UNSW provides an independent, evidence-based, system-wide understanding of energy’s contribution to the economy. 

• Independent: The Energy Institute’s perspective is free from conflicted funding and advice.  
• Evidence-based: UNSW undertakes rigorous, peer-reviewed research using scientific methods.  
• System-wide: UNSW’s perspective spans the energy value chain, from energy production and generation, distribution, end use, energy markets and economics. 

UNSW has world-class research facilities and hundreds of energy experts with a strong reputation for excellence, rigour  and relevance.

We ask and answer “big questions”, and seek to achieve tangible, long term impact. The Institute provides credible advocacy in the public domain, supported by modelling and research. 

The Institute is informed by a strong legacy of deep research capabilities across the entire energy value chain 

• Science and technology: traditional and renewable energy, energy storage, energy systems and integration, power-to-gas and gas-to-power, digital grids, energy efficiency and productivity, energy-smart precincts and buildings, energy access and affordability. 
• Public policy, economics and market design, laws, standards and regulation, social acceptance and energy equity. 

Operating across Faculty and School boundaries, the Energy Institute magnifies and accelerates UNSW’s impact so that the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts”. We collaborate with renowned UNSW centres and institutes in energy-adjacent domains: 

• Energy-transport nexus: UNSW Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation; 
• Energy-water nexus: UNSW Global Water Institute;  
• Energy-climate nexus: UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.

The UNSW Energy Institute recognises the ubiquity of current energy technologies and fuels, and the need to transition to cleaner, more efficient and productive energy solutions.  

The global energy transition will involve a portfolio of responses, and UNSW is uniquely positioned, with experts in a range of relevant research areas, including science and technology, market design and regulation, public policy and social equity. Our expertise ranges from traditional energy sources to clean energy. In clean energy topics alone, we have 160 areas of unique capability:

Breadth of our energy storage expertise 

Addressing energy storage solutions is now critical and at the forefront of world economic policy and corporate investment.UNSW has both broad and deep expertise in energy storage solutions, with more than 50 storage capabilities,  including battery storage (development, characterisation and manufacturing), mechanical storage, thermal storage, bioreactor storage, hydrogen, storage for vehicles, and integrating and optimising storage.

For more information and research highlights, download our Energy Storage Capability Portfolio.

Dani Alexander
MBiotech, BBusMan, BSc
Chief Executive Officer, UNSW Energy Institute 

Ms Dani Alexander is a passionate advocate for reshaping our energy system to be clean, affordable, reliable and equitable. Her experience in the energy sector is broad having held roles in universities, government including the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and industrial co-operative research centres. Her background is multi-disciplinary in science and business, reflecting the nature of her work bridging the gap between new technology and transitioning markets.

Dani has a deep and broad knowledge of the energy transition, including energy system flexibility, renewable energy generation, clean fuels, energy storage, grid integration and energy consumers and markets. Her own research focuses on mainstreaming energy innovation across the value chain, accelerating the technology and commercial maturity of new technologies.

Email: dani.alexander@unsw.edu.au 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dani-alexander-83817888/