Professor James Murray-Parkes, a world-class applied physicist based in Newcastle, said using nature in a sustainable way would reduce energy use.

"In Queensland and northern NSW, a lot of bananas are grown. You have a series of hands of bananas. They create a bunch," he said.

"Then there's an entire tree left. They cut that entire tree back to about 900mm to a metre off the ground."

This plant waste could be used to create the building materials of the future.

"When you look at the cellular structure of that banana tree, you'll see it's made of these really cool fibres that have really good tensile strength," he said.

"You can turn that into a material that doesn't need to run a giant blast furnace to be processed, like with steel or aluminium. You can actually make a corrugated roofing product to take over from corrugated steel. And you don't need to burn anything to do it."

He gave the example of "extremely strong" plants that grow around the equator, where a lot of storm activity occurs.

"So the plants that sustain in those areas, like palm and banana trees, are very tensile.

"They're used to withstanding these massive wind forces."

Lantana is another example of a strong plant that could be used as a sustainable resource.

"We have a plentiful supply of lantana in the Australian bush. It's killing our bush quicker than bush fires. Lantana can't be beat."

He said lantana was widely available due to its "tensile strength, resistivity and durability".

"It can take a hiding from anything we dish out to it and still sustain. Doesn't that tell you it might make a really good building material?"

Using these types of concepts, Australia could be "like we used to be".

"A smart Australia uses what we have around us, as opposed to buying it off a shelf from China," he said.

Professor Murray-Parkes, who has made a lot of money for corporations through his use of applied physics, advised companies to "employ some smart physicists".

"There's all these highly educated, highly qualified physicists and engineers that are getting the sack from universities," he said.

"These guys know how to build environmentally-friendly, energy-producing hubs. If you go and give a university a million dollars, you can get the same result for paying $100,000 and employing a scientist."

He said it was crazy to sack scientists, given the big transition from coal that is coming.

"You should be going after the market and saying, who wants to do some innovation? Who wants to get into solar and wind? Who wants to get into wave technology?

"Who wants to invest and produce some cool IP [intellectual property] and make some money?"

He said the future was a "golden opportunity".

"There are a lot of smart people out there that are investing in things," he said.

"There are firms that think outside the box and diversify. It's not only climate change that's forcing diversification, it's going to be economies."

The winners will be companies that invest in new technologies that are good for profits and the planet.

"You can do things wrong, get some low hanging fruit and make a lot of money.

"But you can do things right and grow a tree, sustain it, not have to pick the low-hanging fruit and just have fruit coming forever.

"We need to learn how to do things right. Scientists in touch with Newton's laws can help clients or customers do it right."

Professor Murray-Parkes is known for using the scientific technique of biomimicry. This involves imitating nature to find solutions to real-world problems.

He used the mathematics of spider webs to make tall buildings more structurally sound and sustainable.

He said skyscrapers could be designed to harvest the energy created from the way they move in the wind. The buildings of the future should be designed to "move like grasses and bamboo - in a series of very slight ellipses".

"This allows the structure to sustain and not fall over in the wind or an earthquake. It also distributes a lot of energy and puts a lot of energy back into the earth."

As such, he said the buildings and even skyscrapers of the future can "100 per cent" be built to power themselves.

"Couple that with photovoltaic glass and you have more energy than you require," he said.

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