Leading investment, delivering returns

The CEFC delivered a sustained focus on new investment activity during the 2020–21 year, investing across increasingly diverse areas of the economy while countering the headwinds of the pandemic and the associated economic disruption.

In our ninth year of investment activity, we extended our reach into innovative investment models and technologies, capturing new investor capital and supporting new investment opportunities. We also delivered careful management of our large portfolio, where maturing investments continue to make their mark on the emissions challenge.

As a specialist investor, we saw growing recognition of emissions as an economy-wide challenge and opportunity, accelerating the investor focus on closing technology gaps and exploring emissions solutions for hard-to-abate sectors. In parallel, increased investor interest in the cleantech sector demonstrated the economic potential of the clean energy transition.

CEFC investment commitments during the year continued to demonstrate the breadth of our focus, with new investments in agriculture, cleantech innovation, hydrogen, infrastructure, property, transport and waste. This included investment commitments that support delivery of the Australian Government Technology Investment Roadmap, which seeks to accelerate the development and commercialisation of low emissions technologies.

From an energy perspective, we have substantially increased our focus on grid-related investments, alongside our continued support for generators, infrastructure owners and our co-investors. This has been across energy storage, demand management and large-scale transmission infrastructure. The CEFC investment uplift here reinforces the market appreciation of the critical role of these assets in delivering the required conditions to support the next wave of renewable energy generation, where Australia has considerable untapped potential.

CEFC investment activities in 2020–21 also capitalised on emerging investor trends, including the rapidly expanding pool of available capital seeking low emissions investment opportunities. The CEFC is working with institutional investors to drive transformative emissions reduction activities in long-life infrastructure assets, and across the property and agriculture sectors. These investments are also supporting improvements in climate risk measurement and analysis, in response to increasing pressure for transparency over portfolio emissions profiles.