Plea for KiwiSaver, major investors to back more ‘green’ projects

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KiwiSaver and other investment fund managers are being urged to put money into renewable energy and decarbonisation projects.

Purpose Capital has just led an investment group putting $7.4 million into solar power company Lodestone Energy, taking their total investment to $17.4m, as part of a larger $55m funding raise for the company.

The company is an impact investor, which seeks projects with sound commercial returns but also social and environmental benefits.

Its executive director Bill Murphy said it was backing Lodestone because of its strong management team, and the benefits gained from its solar farms being built around the country.

“Solar generation is quite attractive as a commercial investment and it meets our criteria as an impact investment.”

He said it favoured solar farms over solar panels on roofs because they produced more power for the capital invested, but it had also been involved in replacing fossil fuel fired boilers, and carbon reducing refrigerating equipment for dairy farms.

The Purpose Capital syndicate joined with investment concerns including Fisher Funds, ACC, K1K1, and Pathfinder, and it usually acted as the lead player by doing the due diligence and negotiation to bring in other investors.

Investor fund reluctance

However, Murphy was critical that too few KiwiSaver funds and other investment managers were involved in such impact projects.

“The KiwiSaver funds, the institutional investors, that’s where the wealth and the dollars are, [they] could certainly do much, much more in investing in funds such as our own that do direct investing into New Zealand companies or investing alongside us.

“That’s certainly something that needs to happen. We are well behind other countries, but the other side is quality investment opportunities that is something that the finance sector needs [in order] to invest.”

Murphy said a lot of fund managers took a narrow view on financial market rules, which were used as an excuse not to be involved.

He said the government also should not be reducing its contribution to carbon reduction by discontinuing funding to various programmes, or by counting on increased economic growth to provide solutions.

“They’ll be looking at greentech, methane reducing pills for dairy cows, and renewables, but … we need to do much more than that such as public transport, so I’m hoping the government will also be supporting those sorts of things to quicken up the emissions reductions that we really have to get on to.”