Tēnā koutou katoa, Nei ra ka mihi ki a koutou ko Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, te mana whenua o tēnei rohe, e mihi ana.

Ki a koutou, ngā manuwhiri, tēnei te mihi. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huri noa ki te whare, tēnā tātou katoa.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. This summit brings together people who are shaping the way capital flows in Aotearoa – and with that, shaping the kind of future that is built. These conversations matter. Because in rooms like this, ambition grows and the pace picks up.

This is important because we don’t have the luxury of moving slowly on issues like climate change. It’s not a distant breeze – Mark Carney’s famous 2015 speech as the Governor of the Bank of England called climate change “one of greatest tragedies of the horizon”. It’s a reality, shaping global markets, communities and economies.

For generations, Pacific navigators read the wind, the waves, and the stars to get to where they needed to be. They set their course using deep ocean swells and moved with purpose. The same principles apply as we navigate the climate transition.

While political winds might shift and bluster, the global tide is still moving in one direction. Investors aren’t and should not be distracted by surface chop – it is in all of our interests to read the deeper swell.

Long-term asset owners, global regulators and markets know that climate change is a material financial risk. Managing that risk doesn’t just protect portfolios, it positions them for growth. And in many ways, transition risk is simply the market discovering the price of inaction. Because climate change is one of the defining investment opportunities of our time.

The question now is: How quickly can New Zealand seize these opportunities?

As it stands, we could be moving a lot faster. A recent survey by the Investor Group on Climate Change, Mindful Money, and the Centre for Sustainable Finance looked at climate action by New Zealand investors. It told us that despite falling costs and rising opportunities, investment in climate solutions remains low.

So what’s needed to shift the dial? From the perspective of a long term investor, when I think about how New Zealand can confidently accelerate investment on climate, I think of three simple factors: capital, capability, and opportunity.

There’s certainly no shortage of capital available for credible transition investments. Global investors are already mobilising trillions of dollars into the climate transition.

We’ve also got the capability. Alongside the real talent and expertise we already have in Aotearoa, we can draw on specialised skills and experience from offshore – and it’s something we could be leaning into more deliberately. If we want to move at the speed and scale this transition demands, we need to move past the No. 8 wire mentality and be ready to partner with those who can help deliver on the pace required and bring the scale we need.

Opportunity, on the other hand, is the biggest variable right now.

If we want to secure our share of global capital, New Zealand needs to be creating investible opportunities at sufficient scale, and making it all simple and easy. This includes making it straightforward for capital to come in – and to exit.

As a small, geographically distant nation, our current edge doesn’t come from size, location or other natural advantages – it comes from trust. Political stability, strong institutions, credible regulation and a reputation for quality give us a platform many others don’t have. This is what we need to build on.

Ultimately, capital chases scale, clarity, and certainty – flowing to where the frameworks are clearest and the risk/return profile is best.

The UK is a good example. They have an energy strategy. Investors know what energy mix the country wants in 2035, and how it plans to get there. Further they have a stated Government ambition to fully decarbonise their electricity supply by 2035. That certainty allows capital to flow with confidence.

With respect to energy infrastructure, it is a huge opportunity for New Zealand too. I’m not just talking about building turbines and solar panels, but also the storage, transmission and grid upgrades needed to support the electrification needs of New Zealand. These are capital-intensive with long-term, stable returns and direct emissions benefits.

At the New Zealand Super Fund we’ve experienced how clear policy settings and aligned incentives can accelerate the energy transition.

One example is our investment with Infratil in Longroad Energy in the United States. Longroad has developed and acquired more than 6GW of wind, solar and battery projects – that’s over half of New Zealand’s total installed generation capacity.

We have also developed renewable energy projects in Texas benefitting from an investment tax credit scheme which was commonly worth between 30% and 50% of project cost.

Here at home, our partnership with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to explore offshore wind shows what can happen when investors and government engage early.

To see more investment like this happening on our shores, we need projects big enough to attract institutional investors – supported by attractive policy settings, incentives and frameworks that give investors confidence that a project will proceed and re competitive against the global opportunity set.

That’s one of the reasons the New Zealand Super Fund is supporting the development of a sustainable finance taxonomy for New Zealand. Having consistent definitions of what qualifies as “sustainable” helps investors allocate capital with confidence and at speed. We’ve already seen how powerful that clarity can be.

In Brazil, a well-established sustainable finance taxonomy gave us the confidence to invest in a large-scale reforestation fund. It focuses on reforestation and sustainable timber production, with substantial areas set aside for conservation and biodiversity.

This reforestation fund has now attracted global partners like Microsoft and Meta, who have signed long-term agreements to purchase nature-based carbon removal credits. Carbon credits make up around half of the fund’s net present value.

Nature-based solutions like this – when backed by credible frameworks and robust measurement – deliver both real climate outcomes and attractive investment opportunities. They also tie into what is arguably New Zealand’s biggest transition opportunity: the way we use our land. 

Now few sectors define us like agriculture. Decarbonising it –  and reimagining land use – isn’t just a challenge, it’s a chance to unlock enormous economic and environmental value.

The Super Fund’s farming portfolio has already evolved from being predominantly dairy to a more diversified mix of dairy and horticulture.

In South Canterbury, for example, we’ve partnered with T&G to establish the apple industry in the region, converting dairy land into an apples. This shift is expected to deliver around twice the returns of our typical dairy investment, while cutting emissions by around 90%, significantly improving nitrogen levels, and reducing water use. 

This is just one small example of the Fund’s Climate Change Investment Strategy in play. Since launching our strategy in 2016, we have steadily reduced our exposure to assets most at risk in a low-carbon world, while increasing our exposure to those driving the transition.

Compared to the market average, the Fund is lower carbon while continuing to deliver strong financial performance. We have reduced our emission intensity by 64% against our unadjusted benchmark and all but removed reserves from the portfolio without sacrificing returns or increasing risk. 

Of course, meaningful change comes down to much more than the footprint of a single portfolio.

We can’t expect a single sustainable investment strategy to be a silver bullet either.

What’s needed is a multi-faceted approach, with investors, governments, and markets working together.

We know that one of the areas where large investors and companies can have the greatest influence is through systemic stewardship: using our collective voice with policymakers, industry bodies, as well as investments in listed and unlisted capital.

This was reinforced in a recent Willis Towers Watson report we commissioned to review the New Zealand Super Fund against other peer funds. The review showed that we aren’t alone in any of our thinking –systemic stewardship, and systemic risks such as climate change are – and remain – top priorities for global long-term investors. 

We’re seeing this reflected in the global regulatory landscape as well. Climate disclosures, net-zero targets and tightening requirements are becoming the norm across major economies.

Mandatory Climate-Related Disclosures here in New Zealand have helped build transparency and inform decision-making – but to stand out in global markets, companies need to be doing more.

This next decade isn’t about pledges – it’s about pipes, poles, ports, and people. The real work of the transition is happening in the ground, on the grid, and in the hands of those building what comes next.

What matters now is how companies build credible transition strategies. Those that do will be better placed to attract capital. Those who hesitate will find the world moving on without them.

Which brings us back to confidence. What we need now is the confidence – collectively – to move faster and go further.

That starts with a sense of clarity, so investors can commit capital with conviction. It requires courage to act even when the waters aren’t perfectly calm. And it depends on collaboration, because this isn’t a solo voyage. When those elements come together, confidence compounds.

And like a fleet of sails catching the same wind, acceleration happens when everyone is pulling in the same direction – leaning into opportunity and moving toward a future we can already see on the horizon.