The New Zealand Super Fund has made a major investment in sustainable energy infrastructure.
Photo: 123rf
The $58 billion fund has committed up to $208 million into the Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' Energy Transition Fund (CIP).
The fund focuses on developing industrial scale sustainable energy infrastructure, known as Power-to-X.
Power-to-X refers to the use of surplus electricity created from renewable generation, and subsequently producing fuels such as hydrogen.
Investments will be focused in OECD markets in Western Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific.
"We're pleased with our investment into CIP's new fund. It has a strong track record of identifying infrastructure opportunities in the clean energy response to climate change," said NZ Super Fund chief investment officer Stephen Gilmore.
"In addition to reducing the risk to our portfolio arising from climate change, we also want to take advantage of opportunities in areas such as energy transition, renewable energy and decarbonisation infrastructure. Our investment with CIP is an outcome of this strategy.
"As a long-term investor we're attracted to the risk-adjusted returns available from infrastructure investment and are looking to increase exposure to infrastructure both internationally and domestically."
The super fund's head of external investment partnerships Del Hart said the move is in line with its climate goals.
"We believe it's going to play an important role in energy transition by decarbonising hard to abate sectors, so sectors such as shipping, aviation and heavy road transport in particular.
"And why it's important to us is this investment gives us exposure to these transformative infrastructure investment projects, that are really aligned with our climate change investment strategies and also with our sustainable finance focus as well."
The Energy Transition Fund has five greenfield projects in Australia, Denmark, Norway, Spain and Sweden, and an advanced pipeline of seven more projects.