Executive General Manager System Design Nicola Falcon, 14 October 2026
Thank you, Professor Wang, for that introduction and good afternoon, everyone.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the First Nations women around Australia who care for country, strengthen communities and contribute their knowledge, skills and leadership to Australia’s changing energy system.
Ten years ago, I received a phone call I will never forget.
It was actually my first time as Incident Coordinator when extreme weather damaged transmission infrastructure in South Australia, triggering a statewide blackout.
Looking back, it was quite the baptism of fire.
I still remember taking that initial call from the emergency team and working alongside a remarkable group of people, including AEMO’s control room teams, operation planners, engineers, market teams and many others who pulled together under pressure to respond to the event and safely restore supply.
It feels right to begin there because this year marks ten years since the blackout.
2026 also marks twenty years since the commencement of Western Australia's Wholesale Electricity Market, and for AEMO, more than a decade of supporting electricity supply and market operations in Western Australia.
On the surface, these are two very different anniversaries. One reflects a crisis, the other celebrates a milestone in a mature market. But together they tell a much bigger story about just how much Australia’s energy sector has changed over the past two decades.
The South Australian system black became one of the defining moments of that change. It prompted a reassessment of how we plan for reliability and system security in an increasingly complex power system. It contributed to reforms that continue to shape the National Electricity Market today, including the development of the Integrated System Plan, or ISP, a body of work I now have the privilege of leading as AEMO's Executive General Manager of System Design.
Since 2016, systems have become more resilient, technology has changed fundamentally, planning is more complex by an order of magnitude and most importantly, the people who plan, manage and operate the system have changed too.
Ten years ago, when I took that call about the South Australian blackout, I was part of a smaller cohort of women working across Australia’s energy sector. Twenty years ago, when the WEM was established, the cohort of women was smaller still.
Today, I am one of four women on AEMO's eight-member Executive Leadership Team, including my colleague Kirsten Rose, who leads AEMO's operations in Western Australia as the WEM enters its third decade.
Across the sector, we have also seen women take on leadership roles in networks, generators, consumer organisations and policy teams that would have been far less common twenty years ago. Today, two of Australia's three national energy market bodies are led by women, including Anna Collyer, Chair of the Australian Energy Market Commission, my fellow Equal by 30 Ambassador and fellow panellist later today.
That progress is something to celebrate. Not simply because representation matters, though it absolutely does, but because the next phase of the energy transition demands diverse perspectives, experiences and leadership if it is to fully succeed.
To achieve government goals, Australia has to replace retiring coal power stations, expand and modernise transmission networks, integrate unprecedented levels of renewable energy, batteries and consumer energy resources, and maintain reliability and security throughout that transformation.
It is one of the largest industrial and economic transitions our country has ever undertaken, and planning, designing and delivering it requires leveraging the talent and skills of a much larger, cross-disciplinary workforce.
As we look ahead to the next chapter of the National Electricity Market, which is the topic of my remarks today, I also think the past offers us a lesson.
Good outcomes are not guaranteed. They depend on careful planning and investment, a willingness to prepare for challenges before they arrive and a commitment to preserving the gains already made.
That is equally true of women's participation in the energy transition.
I don’t want to pre-empt the discussion that will take place later this afternoon on Equal by 30. But I do want to use my presentation as a preface for that discussion, to look at the ISP through the lens of how to map diverse career pathways through sectoral and industry shifts, because the energy transition is also creating significant opportunities for women looking to enter or build careers in the industry.
Almost 24 million Australians now live in the five states connected by the National Electricity Market, known as the NEM, and the ISP sets out the long-term least-coast roadmap to meet their energy needs.
It’s probably one of the most diverse populations on the planet, and the way people consume energy – and increasingly, how they generate it – is almost as diverse as they are.
The centrepiece of the ISP is the optimal development path, or ODP, which sets out the least-cost way to support secure and reliable electricity supply as coal power stations retire and electricity consumption near doubles, while meeting government policy through to 2050.
The ISP has evolved over the years in response to requests from government and in response to changes in the system itself.
I’ve been involved in all but one of the ISPs since its inception, and the 2026 ISP includes enhanced consideration of gas, distribution networks and demand-side factors.
It is designed to be useful for all stakeholders in the energy system, so it packs in a lot of analysis and insights. Regulation also requires the ISP to identify ‘actionable’ transmission projects which should progress as quickly as possible.
The conclusion of the two years of intensive consultation and analysis is that renewable energy, connected by transmission and distribution, firmed with storage and backed up by gas, presents the least-cost way to supply secure and reliable electricity to consumers through to 2050, as coal plants retire, while meeting government policies.
Broadly speaking, that’s the “What”.
Now I’m going to take you “under the hood”; to the “how” of building the ISP.
Preparing the ISP is a bit like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge – as soon as you finish, it’s time to start again.
Work on the current ISP started just after the 2024 ISP was released and AEMO has already started work on ISP 2028.
In fact, we released the 2026 ISP at the end of June, and in the first week of July we met with the 2028 ISP Consumer Panel. I’m pleased to note there are two women on the panel of four, Georgie Morris, from the SA Council of Social Services and Dr Jarra Hicks, Director of the Community Power Agency.
I said earlier that I've been involved in every iteration of the ISP bar one, and one of the key lessons I've learned is that energy leadership today looks very different from what it did twenty years ago.
Technical expertise remains essential. But increasingly, success depends on bringing together diverse perspectives, navigating uncertainty, building trust with stakeholders and helping people work through complex trade-offs.
In many ways, those are the same leadership skills that will define the next chapter of the energy transition.
The 2026 ISP is the product of more than a thousand modelling runs and consultation with close to two thousand stakeholders across the country.
That consultation is both broad and deep, spanning consumers and advocates, industry, market bodies, governments, academics, environmental groups and consultants. And along the way, AEMO publishes its methodologies, inputs and assumptions which are themselves subject to consultation.
In a complex system with so many moving parts, shaped by decisions by governments, investors, industry and increasingly, those made by millions of consumers themselves, consultation cannot be performative. It must be genuine and deep, and at AEMO, we’ve found that a diverse workforce is much more likely to recognise the different perspectives shaping decisions – including by the half of the population who are female.
Of course, consultation, while essential, is only part of this body of work. The 2026 ISP planning team assessed more than 1,000 combinations of generation, storage, transmission and distribution investments to identify the least-cost development pathway for the NEM.
Pathways were tested against changes in key assumptions.
Analysts assessed different levels CER coordination, different levels of energy efficiency, higher demand from industrial loads including data centres, and constrained delivery of generation and transmission projects.
When most people look at the final ISP, they see infrastructure – the transmission lines, renewable energy zones, batteries, generation and networks the NEM will require by 2050, and when and where they will be built.
I see those things too. But more than that, I see people, with an extraordinary diversity of skills, at AEMO and the networks we work so closely with, people in industry, government and the community with the ability to work through competing interest, difficult trade-offs and complex problems.
The are engineers, data analysts, economists, planners, cyber specialists, environmental scientists, community engagement professionals, project managers, policy experts and many more. There is almost as great diversity again in the skills of those required to actually design, build, connect and operate the infrastructure the transition requires. And it’s not just the skills – it’s the sheer numbers of people with those skills that are needed. The demand for skilled people to build and maintain energy infrastructure was forecast in the 2024 ISP to increase from approximately 36,000 in 2025 to over 57,000 by 2050.
The challenges I spend most of my time thinking about in the course of leading System Design are rarely solved by a single discipline. The most successful teams are often those that can bring multiple perspectives together around a common problem.
Beyond that, I have found that a diverse team reviewing feedback from stakeholders is the best way to identify the genuinely new or challenging insights that require us to reconsider our analysis or refine it to better capture what is happening, or will happen, in the future. The more diverse the perspectives around the table, the more robust the solutions we develop.
The energy transition is often described in terms of a technological transformation, but it is also a workforce transformation where women from all backgrounds, with a diverse range of skills and qualifications, are well placed to succeed. For emerging leaders, the energy transition represents one of the most significant opportunities to influence national reform, infrastructure development and economic transformation anywhere in Australia today. And while the ISP is intended to fulfil the requirements set down for it by government, it’s also a pretty useful guide to planning your career in energy, because it tells you where and when investments will most likely be made and where skilled and talented women in energy can really make their mark.
Inside AEMO and across the industry, it is clear that the energy transition is creating new roles, career pathways and opportunities to contribute, regardless of where someone starts their career.
Ten years ago, when I received that call about the South Australian system black, I couldn't have predicted the exact pathway of Australia's energy transition. I didn’t know that the Integrated System Plan would result from the review of the system black event or that I would lead the work one day.
What I do know, looking back, is that every step of that journey depended on people.
Being a woman in energy was once a much lonelier proposition. At AEMO we’ve made real progress in recruiting and retaining our female workforce, with almost 40% of AEMO’s staff and 39% of our leaders being female. But the pipeline is thin and we need more women coming into AEMO - and that means encouraging more women into the sector overall.
The future energy system will be strongest when it is planned and built by people who best reflect the community the power system serves. As women in energy and renewables you are playing key roles in bringing that future into reality, and I’m more than happy to take your questions.