It’s a mystery who the four founding donors are, but by November, Flora Grant, head of climate solutions at the new philanthropic organisation, Climate Impact Australia, will be set to hit the climate action market.
As governments and the private sector seem to fall victim, once again, to the climate wars, it’s great to see there’s a group with a source of funds that isn’t beholden to either.
When we spoke to her on Thursday on the way to a meeting with one of the founding donors, Grant was encouraging and enthusiastic.
“Philanthropy has the power to move often more quickly than governments and markets are able to, and often be that first mover,” she said.
The new outfit will help steer “ultra high net worth individuals” who want to fund climate solutions with the biggest impact but may not be sure where to start..
It will aim to match projects with the most impact with donors’ passions but then leave it to the doors to invest direct. So, more an advisory role with advice provided free of charge.
“We won’t have a single theory of change. We’re going to support multiple different solutions that align with donors’ interests,” Grant said.
There are four target area: “supporting the transition, supporting new green technologies, elevating First Nations knowledge and activity in this space, and protecting nature.”
The group takes its cue – and model – from a US group called Climate Lead, which claims to have mobilised more than $6 billion for climate solutions. Among them electrifying transport in emerging economies, influencing policies at local levels to close coal plants (it claims it’s stopped 350 coal plants from being built), while supporting workers and local economies, challenging permits to enforce clean air and water laws and restrict coal projects and saving $14 billon in health care costs.
Grant said the organisation was “incubated” by the Australian Environmental Grant Makers Network. She’s currently hiring two new roles, head of donor engagement and a climate solutions lead, through Johnson Recruitment, planning to take total recruitment to five.
Here comes Alice! Again
The timing of Climate Impact Australia could not be better.
According to the noise from Martin Place the climate wars are officially back on, sending us down the rabbit hole favoured so long ago by the Abbott government.
Believe it or not, the clean energy providers say they’ve once again lost certainty thanks to the Coalition and One Nation wanting to scrap our net zero target by 2050, bring back the useless idea of nuclear energy and remove the scope 3 emissions reporting obligations.
Mussaret Nagree, the chief energy transition officer at Wesfarmers told an energy conference that “We thought we had broken the climate war cycle and, unfortunately, it looks like we’re back in it,” he said.
“We need a bipartisan position … we can’t be in a situation where we’re a hostage to three year election cycles when we’re looking at large-scale abatement projects that cost hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, and only make a return over 20 or 30 years.”
Grok Ventures investment boss Ridhaa Ahmed told the conference that in the US the key metric was how a project could survive election cycles.
And nuclear is back in play, thanks to the squillions of fees that its proponents hope to pick up via taxpayer money under a Coalition government as they struggle to make a case for it, because they want government to pay for it.
Scrapping scope 3 reporting is not productive
The Coalition also wants to get rid of scope 3 reporting for corporates.
Someone who consults in this field, Misha Cajic, co-founder and co-CEO of Avarni, said on Thursday afternoon in an email that the case for this was weak. It relied on Treasury estimates of around $245,000 for each company in year one and $160,000 a year after.
“That doesn’t match what we’re seeing,” Cajic said. “Group 1 companies are spending at least 50 per cent less than that, and year one is the most expensive year because that’s when the systems get set up.”
He added that scope 3 requests “won’t stop whether the mandate stays or goes”. There’s still requests for reporting from super funds and investors.
The burden still falls on suppliers and scrapping the mandate would “actually make life harder for the small suppliers it’s meant to protect”.
Treasury is already looking at ways to reduce the burden by limiting what companies can ask for and accepting spend-based estimates, he said.
But then again, all this noise is politics and not logic. So, no surprise. Our eyes are on the money.
