Weekend Edition: CEFC, NAB and the path to net-zero
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How has the current energy crisis accelerated the push toward net‑zero?
Has the energy crisis expedited our path to net zero? And what about COVID? Even without these two big disruptions to supply chains, how have we been traveling when it comes to greener energy and less pollution? And what is NAB and the CEFC doing about it? And who is the CEFC anyway? All that in the next half hour. The morning call from NAB with Phil Dobby. So I wonder whether the uh the current energy crisis from the the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and also, you know, the supply chain s shocks that we saw during and since COVID, I wonder whether that strengthened the case to go greener faster and does it all make uh in investment in green technology a safer bet? Well, CEFC is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, it's a specialist in
Investor focused on the country's net zero targets, and NAB has joined them as well in a co-finance programme. So, how does all that work? We'll talk about all of that today. James Bentley is the director for sustainable finance for NAB's Business Bank. Uh, just back actually from visiting clients in regional Australia, and Richard Lavelle is head of debt markets at CEFC. So, Richard, let's talk about uh CEFC first of all. So, it is it's government. It's just like a quasi government body.
Yeah, that's right. So we're um we're owned and funded by the government, but we have an independent board uh who are required to make independent investment decisions and we're ultimately uh a wholesale financier tasked with trying to help the um help the country meet the emissions targets that have been set by the government and also uh and this is our primary objective to try and crowd capital into the clean energy sector.
So it's sort of like looking for the tipping point, isn't it, I guess? So you'd so if you if you put a certain amount of money in, you you you remove obstacles so the private sector can all of a sudden say, Now this makes commercial sense But I mean how do you know where that tipping point is? Uh through the um
The infinite wisdom of our talented executives and investment committee, Phil, is the um textbook answer. But look it's not it's um it's a challenge. You have to just try and spend a lot of time and effort doing it. But we do have the luxury of having um, you know, a specialist team that are subject matter experts in all of these different sectors. And so we are able to go quite deep on um the sectors we have. Um, you know, a well-resourced research team, um and so we We spend a lot of time trying to work out what the pathway forward looks like. And there's a lot of literature and research that's done around the space in terms of the technology mixes. And then we have to translate that into the finance pathways.
And so that's in some ways what we do.
So your objective though, so you put the money in and you create that opportunity for other people to invest in that space. So you're not concerned about getting a commercial return yourself to put back into the fund? Or are you? To try and are you trying to break even, for example?
Yeah, it's back to that balancing act. So in fact we are required to invest on um as commercial a basis as possible under our legislation. We're not a lender of last resort. Um uh what we try and do is basically invest on a commercial basis but with an ability to, you know, consider risks that others might find more challenging. There are some instances and this is probably a neat segue um perhaps into some uh like a lot of the work that we've done with NAB who've been an incredible partner for us. There are instances in which we invest on a commercial basis but we then look at the investment return that we're making and we work out how to try and use that return so as to encourage activity which otherwise might not have taken place.
And the classic example here is if you've got small businesses that uh are making decisions around the sort of investment uh you know capex decisions around the sort of equipment that they might be looking to buy to replace existing kit. or expanding to buy a new kit.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How has the current energy crisis accelerated the push toward net‑zero?
0:01–3:42
2
What is the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and how does it operate?
3:42–7:20
3
How do NAB and CEFC structure co‑financing and interest‑rate discounts for green projects?
7:20–11:04
4
Why is no‑till farming considered a key emissions‑reduction technology for Australian agriculture?
11:04–14:19
5
How do interest‑rate discounts make green equipment affordable for SMEs and farmers?
14:19–17:50
6
What are the biggest barriers to electric‑vehicle and electric‑truck adoption in Australia?
17:50–21:34
7
How is the green‑hydrogen fertilizer project at Moree demonstrating a resilient, low‑carbon business model?
21:34–24:28
8
What have been CEFC’s major achievements over the past 13 years and where is the focus now?
24:28–26:19