Nexa Advisory welcomes the opportunity to contribute to DISER’s Net Zero Fund: proposed design consultation.
Australia’s growth challenge is an innovation challenge. Recent analyses highlight that Australia’s economy cannot continue to rely on ‘lucky country’ resource cycles for growth; we must lift innovation, research and development and commercialisation to build new low carbon industries.
This is particularly relevant for clean energy and decarbonisation technologies – which are the fastest pathway to lift productivity and growth and enabling Australia to become a clean energy superpower. The energy sector is integral to productivity and represents a once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity to turn reliability, lower costs and new industrial capabilities into broad‑based economic growth – but only with whole‑of‑government alignment, orderly coal exit signals and certainty around transmission delivery in order to unlock the required investment in generation and storage.
The $5 billion Net Zero Fund (NZF) can be the catalytic instrument that crowds in private capital at scale if it is designed to fill today’s public funding gap and fix persistent structural, policy and market barriers.
Supporting investment in decarbonisation technologies should be the core investment mandate of the NZF. However, the NZF should be restricted from providing funding for existing polluters which have otherwise failed to manage stranded asset or transitional risks.
Read our submission here: Nexa Advisory submission – DISER Net Zero Fund