The pension fund is backing a small-scale solar power and storage development venture that intends to avoid the roadblocks in the slow transmission build-out.
Aware Super expects to invest up to $2 billion in small-scale solar and batteries through a partnership with privately owned Birdwood Energy. The investment will be in a distributed energy platform that would dodge the transmission logjam, which is putting a brake on the transition to renewables.
The investment is thought to be the first by an Australian superannuation fund into the distributed energy sector, which is typically difficult for institutional investors to access because of the multitude of smaller companies and projects involved. He said the fund had more than $2 billion invested in large-scale energy transition and renewables projects, mostly utility-scale wind, and wanted to diversify while remaining with the transition theme.
“Distributed energy, which we see will get to up to 60 per cent of generation, is a faster, cheaper way to get to net zero,” Birdwood founder and CEO Scott McGregor said, pointing to its engineering and construction experience to get clean energy projects unlocked and capital deployed at scale.. This is a way to unlock it. It should hopefully provide one channel to get to net zero ... which is faster and cheaper,” he said.