Steering Australia’s Twin Transition: Net-Zero and AI
Warwick Peel is a Partner at Amrop in Australia, bringing his unique expertise at the intersection of finance, climate and artificial intelligence. A former investment banking and private equity search specialist, Warwick also co-chairs the Climate Committee for the United Nations in Australia, and has led senior appointments across carbon markets and responsible investment. At Amrop his focus is on executive roles and advisory work that help institutions and corporates navigate the coming AI and technology transition.
Warwick frames today’s moment as a twin transition. “The established net-zero imperative is running in parallel with a sweeping AI-driven tech transformation,” he says. “Industries that are not “tech-enabled” will soon be out of the game. I see AI not only as a productivity lever but as a structural shift in business models - agentic systems, new revenue streams and radically altered workforce needs - that boards and investors must treat as central to strategy and risk management.”
Digital Governance and Institutional Readiness
Another key aspect is geopolitical and industrial sovereignty in AI. “There are efforts made worldwide to build local large language models,” Peel notes. “Australia must invest in industry-specific models grounded in domain science - examples ranging from agriculture-focused models like China’s Sinong to bespoke LLMs for finance, logistics and health.” There is a real-world commercial upside, exemplified by a retailer running 20 agentic models that produced tens of millions of dollars in value, and a wave of Chief AI and data officer hires across grocers and national institutions.
The Chief AI Officer: Role, Reporting and Impact
For Peel, the Chief AI Officer is much more than just a technical hire. “The CAIO role should combine strategic oversight of “machine capital,” enterprise-wide augmentation of human capability, and entrepreneurial mandate to spin up new ventures enabled by agentic systems,” he is certain. “Ideally reporting to the CEO with monthly board updates, the CAIO should be empowered to reimagine products and operating models.” Peel expects much of the rapid adoption and creative experimentation to come from private markets and PE-backed companies, where risk appetite and speed favor transformational change.
As many would agree, there are risks surrounding AI, however. “Mental-health and safety harms are already surfacing, there are ongoing litigation risks, and divergent regulatory trajectories - with Europe prioritizing transparency and accountability,” Peel enumerates. “The global environmental cost is often overlooked: the projected growth in data-center footprints could materially increase global emissions, creating a second sustainability challenge that must be managed alongside AI adoption.”
Vision of Collaboration and Opportunity
Peel frames a hopeful geopolitical vision in which countries beyond the U.S. and China collaborate to build sovereign, trustworthy AI ecosystems, as Canadian PM Mark Carney framed at Davos, “it is the Rise of the Middle Powers”. “The emergence of regional AI capability is both a defensive necessity and an opportunity for shared standards, ethics and economic uplift,” he concludes. “For businesses and boards, the overall message is urgent but constructive: build governance, invest in capability, appoint the right leaders, and treat AI as a strategic, country-level and industry-level priority. In my work I aim to help institutions not only mitigate AI risk but to capture the productivity, product and resilience gains that responsible, sovereign and well-governed AI adoption can deliver.”
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To find out more reach out to Warwick Peel or the members of the Amrop’s Digital Practice in your country.