Australia's $30b green bank faces a new kind of challenge
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has quietly become one of the country's most powerful investment institutions.
The Albanese government’s unexpected decision to inject $8.6 billion of fresh capital into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation last year marked the dawn of a new era for the country’s once-beleaguered green bank.
And the organisation's chief executive Ian Learmonth freely admits that that the funding windfall comes with strings attached. "It is absolutely fair to say that the government and particularly Energy Minister [Chris] Bowen have a fairly clear picture as to how this capital should be directed," he says in an interview.
The CEFC, which was set up by the Gillard government in 2009, has had a bumpy ride in the past decade, its activities more politicised than its staff would have liked. It was threatened with abolition in 2014 and prevented from investing in wind and solar projects during the Abbott era. It also faced funding cuts during the Morrison government.
Now, the political pressure has subsided and there are no serious calls from either side of politics for the CEFC to be wound up. Replete with the fresh capital, a streamlined investment mandate and a more sanguine political environment for renewable energy, the CEFC is getting back to what it does best — financing the new technologies that will form the background of Australia’s net zero energy system. As at 30 June it had a $30.5 billion capital allocation.
