The new green investment fund would attain “dark green” status, indicating it has sustainability as an objective, under the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), designed to weed out investment industry “greenwashing”.
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IFM set a target in September last year of cutting emissions from its existing infrastructure portfolio by 40 per cent from 2019 levels and exiting all coal exposure by 2030, before hitting net zero emissions in 2050. Its current fossil-fuel assets include petroleum and gas pipelines, distributors and terminals in North America, the natural gas and electrical utilities company Naturgy in Europe. It also owns airports across Australia and Europe.
Mr Mangini said there were solar panels installed at virtually every one of its assets globally, which were also using bulk renewable energy contracts to cut emissions.
IFM was a key partner in the consortium that bought Sydney Airport in February, now owning 33 per cent of the gateway, along with its existing major stakes in Melbourne Airport, Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin.
It owns one-third of Manchester Airport in the UK, which recently announced it would have up to 10 per cent of its fuel supply replaced by lower-emissions “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF) pumped directly from a nearby production plant. But with no SAF being produced in Australia, Mr Mangini could not say when similar supply could be available at its Australian airports.
“The challenge with SAS is heavily around cost. The key really is the ability to produce enough and the ability to produce it at a price that’s broadly competitive with the alternatives,” he said.
With renewable energy now generally cheaper than fossil fuels, Mr Mangini said the transition was now being driven by economic forces rather than government policies.
“The key variable is going to be around planning and ensuring that where facilities are built, they integrate into the system effectively,” he said.
IFM will release an inaugural infrastructure outlook report on Thursday, flagging that, along with decarbonisation, the digitisation of the economy was creating significant new investment opportunities in assets such as telecommunication towers, data centres and fibre networks.
The report also says there is increasing scope for private funds to invest alongside the almost $US3.2 trillion ($4.2 trillion) in infrastructure spending governments have announced worldwide as part of COVID-recovery stimulus plans.
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