First, the purpose of the fund needs to be made clear.
The stated purpose of the Net Zero Fund is to:
- support large industrial facilities seeking to decarbonise, including
investing in the technologies and capital infrastructure required to
transition to lower emissions or more productive processes - support scale-up of manufacturing renewable and low-emissions
technologies.
Further, it is intended to ‘focus on supporting large-scale industrial
facilities as they decarbonise their assets … [ensuring that] Australia
retains industrial capabilities vital to our national interest while working
towards our 2035 target’.
This leaves many questions unanswered. How large is a large facility?
Does ‘large’ mean high emissions, or does it refer to the size of the firm
that owns it? How much decarbonisation should be required? Which
sectors are more in need of assistance than others? Are these sectors
really vital to the national interest and why? Does the government want
quick wins in emissions reduction, or longer-term ones?
Alison Reeve
Energy and Climate Change Program Director
Alison Reeve is the Energy and Climate Change Program Director at Grattan Institute. She has two decades of experience in climate change, clean energy policy, and technology, in theprivate, public, academic, and not-for-profit sectors.
Tony Wood
Energy and Climate Change Senior Fellow
Tony is the Energy and Climate Change Senior Fellow at Grattan Institute. He was previously the Program Director, from 2011 to 2025, and before then worked at Origin Energy in senior executive roles for 14 years. From 2009 to 2014 he was also Program Director of Clean Energy Projects at the Clinton Foundation, advising governments in the Asia-Pacific region on effective deployment of large-scale, low-emission energy technologies.
Ben Jefferson
Associate
Ben Jefferson is an Associate in Grattan Institute’s Energy and Climate Change Program. He previously worked at Boston Consulting Group in the Public Sector and Principal Investors and Private Equity practice areas. Prior to that he worked as a tax and welfare policy research assistant at the ANU and in workplace relations policy in Federal Government.