Climate Investor Forum speech
The Hon. Matt Kean
Chair - Climate Change Authority
May I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation.
It's a privilege to be here at the Climate Investor Forum - because if we are serious about Australia's emissions targets, then we need to be serious about the role of capital.
And today I want to answer a very practical question: How do we turn Australia's climate ambition into investable opportunity?
Because Australia's 62-70% emissions reduction target by 2035 versus 2005 levels is not simply a policy objective - it's an economic transformation agenda.
And it will succeed or fail on one thing above all: our ability to mobilise capital at speed and at scale.
Now, if you look back a quarter-century to how we lived in 2001 and compare that with 2026, you could argue that a lot has changed.
Our houses are a bit bigger, and Australia's has added an extra Victoria in population terms, or more than 7 million people.
More than a third of our houses generate our own electricity and one in six new cars sold last month was an electric vehicle (EV) - compared with a virtual absence of such gadgets back then.
Indeed, last quarter, renewable energy supplied more than half the electricity in Australia's main grid for the first time.
Such advances, though, will seem quaintly slow over the decades to come as technology advances, particularly around electrification, make "turbo-charging" seem sedate.
And when we look overseas, we can see what's possible. In China, the leader in so many of the clean fields, sold 13.3 million EVs domestically last. Easily the world's largest auto market by units, more than half of sales were electric.
In electricity generation, the stats are even more eye-popping. While Australia added in the order of 10 gigawatts of new solar and wind capacity in 2025, China added that amount about every 9 days... clocking up 430GW, or more than the rest of the world combined, according to Carbon Brief(Opens in a new tab/window).
So, what might our world look like in 2050 (coincidentally also a Year of the Horse in the Chinese Zodiac, matching the Lunar New Year that began just yesterday)?
There are many reasons to think we are experiencing a new industrial revolution, guided by artificial intelligence, which will need lots of energy.
Australia, with some of the best renewable energy resources on the planet, will have a commercial and even geopolitical edge over other regions.
Steel, aluminium, ammonia, silicon...whatever you forge, the fuel will increasingly be green.
And while there will be sectors which still need to burn fossil fuels and require a response to climate change, there is hope in what this could look like, too.
Those with hectares to spare will discover new ways to derive income. In addition to traditional agriculture, we could see landowners using carbon sequestration methodologies to bolster soil health, reduce erosion, provide shading for livestock and reduce the drying of our landscape. Hosting solar and wind farms will be more common, too.
And rewilding of biodiversity-rich corridors can reverse the slide of our remarkable and unique Australian ecology - aiding landowners in the process.
Together these efforts can enable us to prosper unlike any previous generation but do so in ways that don't cook our atmosphere and acidify our oceans, avoid melting the giant icesheets of Antarctic and Greenland and so, spare our current coastlines from rapid sea-level rise, among other benefits.
And it will be with private capital, in particular, that we can realise this potential.
1. The world has changed
We are living through a profound global economic reset.
The net zero transition is no longer just about climate risk. It is now about:
- industrial competitiveness
- supply chain security
- energy sovereignty
- and economic leadership.
According to Boston Consulting Group's analysis, meeting Australia's 2035 ambition requires roughly $475 to $630 billion of capital investment over the next decade.
That's in the order of $1 billion - per week.
There will be a lot of competition for that money.
Yes, the Trump administration has been busy winding back the previous government's Inflation Reduction Act, but a lot of the allocated billions will still be spent as the Act intended.
And many US states are pressing on with their decarbonising goals, so it's not just California dreaming.
Elsewhere, the impetus for decarbonising is still intact, whether it's in Europe with their Green Deal Industrial Plan, China - as mentioned - show little sign of reigning in its gigantic investments in renewables and storage.
Other parts of Asia, the Middle East and beyond will vie for capital to meet Paris Climate commitments - and to stay competitive.
In other words, Australia must keep itself an attractive destination for global funds. We are NOT guaranteed a podium placement even with all our natural advantages.
Yes, we all need to cut carbon emissions. The good news is that these efforts are fast becoming the dynamos of economic activity.
More than a third of the growth of China - the world's second-biggest economy - was generated by the clean energy sector in 2025, according to Carbon Brief(Opens in a new tab/window).
To be clear, global capital isn't holding out for perfect certainty.
After all, expanding firms are typically disruptors of the status quo.
We must position ourselves to be magnets for private capital - including from our own superannuation funds that often preference investments in renewable energy and other clean-industry target outside Australia, rather than those at home.
Jurisdictions seeking to lure and retain that capital will be more likely to succeed if they can offer:
- credible targets,
- stable policy frameworks,
- investable project pipelines
- and execution capability.
Much is at stake. If Australia wants to have a say in this global shake-up, we can't be merely price-takers of others' technology and innovation…not if we want to generate well-paying jobs in sustainable industries.
2. The scale of Australia's task
Australia's 62-70% emissions reduction target by 2035 is ambitious. On a per-capita basis, the cut is 76%-81% from 2005 levels - among the steepest reductions on the planet.
It requires a step-change in our efforts to date.
True, we have already made meaningful gains in decarbonising the grid, opening the way to hammer emissions lower as large swathes of the economy electrify.
But it is important to state clearly: the next decade will need to see more progress than the last one.
Capping and then cutting emissions has to happen in several areas, such as:
- transport fuels
- methane
- and hard-to-abate industrial activity, including cement, steel and agriculture.
In other words, the future won't just be about closing coal-fired generators.
3. Why this is not a cost story - it's an opportunity story
When we talk about the transition, too often the conversation is framed as a burden.
But the evidence is increasingly clear: the net cost of the transition is manageable, and the investment opportunity is enormous.
Decarbonisation requires major capital deployment in electricity generation, storage, transmission, distribution, and electrification.
The costs may loom large, but not all of the expenses should be considered "extra" - rather consumer as usual.
The Climate Change Authority, for instance, drew up one pathway towards meeting the 2035 emissions goal that envisaged half of all cars being sold from now until that year being EVs.
That wasn't a prescription nor prediction, to be clear.
But the point is that Australians would be snapping up new cars as the vehicles aged anyway, and their replacements will feasibly be electric in about half the purchases.
Energy efficiency will often be a built-in feature of this transformation.
For instance, only about 11% of energy used to turn the wheels on EV is wasted, compared with 75%-84% wastage in internal combustion-engined vehicles(Opens in a new tab/window).
Some industrial processes - think cement and steel-making - will need further innovations to be competitive.
Heat pumps can shift the heating and cooling loads to the grid. A range of other industrial activities can also be electrified for lower operational costs than gas even with existing technology.
In any case, if that's where the consumers are headed, suppliers will want to be there.
