Essay by Eric Worrall
Betting retirement funds on the honesty, consistency and fiduciary skill of Nut Zero obsessed politicians – what could possibly go wrong?
Australian super fund puts billions into backing Britain’s energy transition
Business and environmental groups urge Labor to supercharge incentives to lure capital
Katharine Murphy Political editor @murpharooMon 27 Nov 2023 09.30 AEDT
The behemoth Australian fund IFM Investors will sink £10bn (A$19bn) into infrastructure and energy transition projects in Britain by 2027 as part of a new memorandum of understanding with the Sunak government.
The decision by IFM – which is owned by 17 Australian industry super funds – comes as a coalition of business and environmental groups calls on the Albanese government to supercharge tax and other financial incentives to ensure Australia can attract sufficient capital to drive the domestic transition to net zero emissions.
The MoU between IFM Investors and Britain’s minister for investment will be signed at the Global Investment Summit in London. Kemi Badenoch, the UK’s business and trade secretary, characterised the commitment from IFM as “a very important investment for the UK’s innovative energy and infrastructure sectors”.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/27/australian-super-fund-puts-billions-into-backing-britains-energy-transition
What is the point of lending money to a nation whose currency is in danger of crashing? To be fair, Britain has an excellent track record of repaying debt, but if they wreck their economy through gross economic mismanagement, all the good intentions in the world can’t fix that.
There are already unequivocal signs the British economy is in trouble. British energy poverty is skyrocketing. Inflation is running red hot, 4.6%+.
Inflation is fever of the economy, frequently accompanied by political delirium – in my opinion, a fair description of British energy policy. The British government’s solution to this inflation, this unequivocal symptom of national policy trauma, is more of the same.
Britain’s national debt also exceeded 100% of GDP according to official March 2023 figures, though it dipped down to 97% last month. Of course this official figure may exclude some rather important future liabilities, possibly unfunded pension liabilities according to some analysis I’ve read, though I’m not an expert on the financial practices of the British Civil Service.
In my opinion if Britain continues down this path, it is only a matter of time until Britain does so much damage to their own economy they default on their debts, either by suspending repayments, or a technical default in the form of trying to print their way out of trouble, repaying nominal GBP debts using hastily debased currency, fulfilling their financial obligations in name only.
I guess they simply still don’t have enough “Other People’s Money”.
Now they want to mortgage your retirement years on failed expenditures.
Throwing Good Money after Bad
Not only Other Peoples Money but the crown wants Other Countries Monies
Canada Pension Plan has also done this.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-pension-plans-investing-offshore-wind/
https://www.cppinvestments.com/public-media/headlines/2018/cppib-signs-agreement-canadian-operating-wind-and-solar-power-portfolio/
https://financialpost.com/news/fp-street/cppib-makes-significant-step-into-renewable-energy-with-pattern-purchase
https://www.cppinvestments.com/public-media/headlines/2022/cpp-investments-supports-renewable-power-capitals-asset-growth-in-swedish-onshore-wind-projects/
Just today:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/green-energy-meltdown-continue-next-year-bloomberg-survey-finds
My son, his wife and two young children live in the UK. When we chatted last night, it was middle of the day there and their youngest had a barking cough. For interest I asked what the thermostat was set on. Without looking, he said it is usually set between 15C and 17C. My wife and I would find that chilly.
They currently live in a rental but are buying a new detached house that meets the latest UK requirements. So they have incentive to be prudent with expenditure. The new house comes with charging point for battery car. At present, charging the car is a royal pain even with the little use it gets. The car is part of his wife’s salary package. She had a choice of cars as long as it was a full BEV.
Snow is forecast in their neck of the woods this week.
With regard to the company car….. Who pays for the power bill when it is charged at home?
Sounds like your son’s family could be either sponsoring the work use of the car or the house needs a second meter.
Damned if I’d pay for petrol to go into a work car.
The new build will have a separate meter for the EV charge point, now a government mandate. This allows extra taxes to replace those no longer available from petrol and diesel.
17’C is chilly, but by the sound of it the house is empty during the day so that’s sensible. But it’s too low for people even if they are dressed for outside.
Are we listening? It is a statutory instrument called The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021.
Another reason for a separate meter is to facilitate demand management. (That’s “rationing” to you and me.)
In fact, if I thought the people designing all this were more clear-eyed than I do, I would think rationing—sorry, “demand management”, not tax, would be the main the reason for demanding a separate smart meter.
“This allows extra taxes to replace those no longer available from petrol and diesel.”
It makes no sense (to me) to simultaneously tax and also subsidize ANYTHING, much less something as infeasible as EVs. I guess, politicians can figure out a way of improving their own lot from each direction of the money flow, but no rational voter should support paying such a move in either direction.
It may not make sense, Tom Johnson, as you correctly say. But when has that ever stopped a government?
However, counter-intuitively to many, the tax raising arm of the government may actually turn out to be a friendly force in this war.
In the UK at least, they are by far the most powerful ministry, answering only to the Prime Minister.
Politicians in other departments may like spending the money, but the Treasury is the department that raises the money.
What the Treasury says, generally goes.
And what they are slowly realising at the Treasury is that the numbers behind the green scam will never add up.
The demanded complete abolition of new internal combustion engine vehicles is already being pushed back.
And it will continue to be pushed back simply because it must be. Not just for technical reasons, but for tax reasons.
It is stupid but look at it from numerically and scientifically challenged politicians point of view.
First. Your mates in the renewable energy industries say they need subsidies in order to provide planet saving energy. So you have to provide subsidies using as much concealment as possible.
Second the people won’t initially accept having their personal motorised transport (cars) taken from them. So you have to offer them an alternative even if it is not fit for purpose. Part of this involves giving them almost untaxed fuel. As the take up of BEVs increases, as it will when there’s no alternative, then revenues will fall. Fuel duty and the VAT raise nearly £40 billion annually.
Third its not clear to anyone in HMRC that there’s a problem with demand exceeding supply in electricity and therefore that £40 billion will have to come from somewhere, car charging at home cannot be allowed to escape having suckered in users in the first place. Politicians will have to do what HMRC advises in this case.
Fourth for the managers of the grid, demand management is a bonus.
So snow in the UK didn’t end in 2000?
Yeah but kids don’t know what it is so they’re all running out with rolled £20 notes and trying to snort the stuff
Getting one heck of a Brain Freeze from it too
15C to 17C during the day? Way too cold. That equates to 59 to 62.5 F. We set our thermostat to drop to 62 at night, 72 during the day, and sometimes we up that to 73 when it is particularly cold or windy out, which cools the house quicker.
Net Zero policy in the UK is destroying the economy and we have supposed conservatives in power, who are certain to lose the election next year. Then we shall have bolts in the side of the neck ecoloons from the Labour Party in power, who always wreck the economy.
Australia, thanks for the money, but consider it a donation, not an investment.
“What is the point of lending money to a nation whose currency is in danger of crashing?”
Sadly for Aussies, what seems to be proposed here is not debt but equity. So, if and when the stupid projects go under, the equity holders would be left with nothing.
Never fear, however, our gutless government has recently massively increased the guaranteed prices (aka subsidies) for the outputs of future renewable projects and indeed is extremely soft generally on arrangements for existing projects, so such investments would be safe given the continuation of the present green stranglehold over policy.
Of course, if we ever got a government not hell-bent on not zero then all bets are off and, personally, I’d be furious if my pension fund invested in such dodgy deals. It’s a “need to” basis and I can’t see why this fund “needs to”.
Suspecting that super fund would go down this idiotic woke route, and are thereby doomed themselves to complete collapse… I cashed in all my super, and put it into shares.
Maybe not the right shares.. only time will tell…
… but certainly a more sensible thing to do than losing all your funds to the anti-science virtue-seeking AGW scam.
How the super funds get away with such MASSIVELY IRRESPONSIBLE investments, is beyond any rational thought.
I hope none of those shares were in EV-manufacturing companies! If they were sell them pronto!
As a UK citizen the plus side is that it’s not my pension fund, if that hasn’t already gone West (possibly east?) already.
This will be another South Sea Bubble or Darien Scheme. The government debt from the SSB was never completely paid off until about a decade ago 300 years after the event.
Eng_Ian – that’s not how it works here in the UK. The car is provided as an employment “perk” or benefit in kind. Employers like to provide full EVs as there are greater tax breaks to them and the employee (taxed on the benefit) than on ICE cars. If the employee uses the car for business purposes, he/she can charge a mileage cost to the employer so they would not be subsidising business use by charging the EV.
Time to call this what it really is:
a climate ponzi scheme.
In a Ponzi scheme some investors get paid back, at least dividends, from new investors. Ultimately, the scheme collapses.
You’re probably right.
If these investments are government guaranteed, are they any different from bonds?
And didn’t Warren Buffett advise that investment in renewable projects only makes sense for the subsidies and the tax breaks?
So maybe these super funds aren’t so much about virtuous investment as soaking the loony UK government for easy $$$$$s.
ESG investing should earn the perpetrators a spell with substandard roommates. One who greets them every morning with “you my b!tch”.
Aren’t there laws requiring retirement funds to be invested according to fiduciary standards?
Are these loans or actual investments, which can simply be lost? Politicians use the term investment in ridiculous ways.
A useful fact is that while inflation is high at 4.6% it has just dropped from 6.7% in a month as should be lower again for this month.
What am I missing here? Business and environmental groups are encouraging Labor (the Australian government leaders?) to supercharge incentives to invest. Incentives to enable Australian super funds to invest in British green energy projects? If the green projects are worth investing in why aren’t the Brits financing it? If the green projects are worth investing in why aren’t the Australian super funds investing in them for Australia? I don’t get it.
I have a self managed superannuation fund to avoid these grifters. I have done very nicely out of investing in fossil fuels and coal. Hopefully there are a bunch of non-greenie lawyers to help run a class action against the trustees of these funds whose legal responsibility is to invest in the best interest of the members of these funds. Instead they seem to beleive they can get away with pi55ing members money up against a wall.
Now I know what the expression “DOWN UNDER” really means
So, the truth is leaking out. Labour promising £28Bn/Yr for at least six years. This is how they plan to fund. As we know, ruinables are doomed, but those pension fund investors will likely have a guaranteed return, funded from the punitive tax levies/subsidies on the UK electorate. So we can fairly assume, increases will be used, to pay those pensions.