Why it’s important: Hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign subsidies are luring capital from local clean energy projects
The chairman of the federal government’s $15 billion “green bank” said 27 companies are investigating making batteries in Australia, a challenge to the orthodoxy that taking on the global battery giants would be a stretch for a high-cost nation. It could look at a “whole raft of things” from quantum computing and making drones, hydrogen for green steelmaking, offshore wind turbines to electric vehicle charging and manufacturing to backing software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ plan to have the, and even building ships to lay the cable to Singapore.
Mr Wilder, a former chairman of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and founder of climate investor and consultant Pollination, will outline his plans for the fund atHe expects the NRF to have to make a return of 2 to 3 per cent above the federal bond rate – similar to the CEFC to avoid forum shopping – under its mandate. The government has already earmarked $3 billion for green energy, $1.
Mr Wilder said, “we should be picking winners” in a targeted way. “Within any manufacturing process, there are multiple parts and there may be areas where Australia can excel at producing one component of that value chain, which we haven’t thought about yet. He added there was likely to be increasing pressure to get to net zero emissions by 2040 rather than 2050, and likened the challenge of transforming the economy to achieve this to post-World War II reconstruction “Marshall planning”.He acknowledged this would be confronting to Australia’s guardians of economic orthodoxy but said the NRF had been set up with a clear public policy goal and “the very purpose of investing in this space”.