Emissions on fast-track path

James Shaw is off to help steer a private investment company into greener pastures. That’s excellent news. As the Green Party former coleader said in his valedictory speech last Wednesday, after politics, the second most influential lever for climate action is finance.

He’s right about that, although not in every way. The world’s big money is critical to slowing the depletion of rainforests, speeding the advance of renewable energy and promoting technological innovation.

It will also be invaluable if we are to reform our cities so we can more easily lead low-emissions lives.

Morrison, the company in which Shaw will become an “operating partner”, is New Zealand’s largest private investment fund. Some of its $38 billion is already invested in solar and wind energy and other green technologies, but much more is needed.

The appointment of Shaw suggests that may be about to happen.

And yet, through the infrastructure company Infratil, which it manages, Morrison has also been heavily invested in enterprises that are not climate-friendly. That includes Wellington Airport — part of the most damaging transport industry on the planet — and Z Energy, which it formed after joining with the New Zealand Super Fund to buy Shell NZ in 2010.

Morrison and the NZSF both more than doubled their money when they floated Z just five years later. Z, like other oil companies, puts a great deal of effort into greenwashing its activities. But an oil company is an oil company.

The job of an “operating partner” is usually to identify investment opportunities and work out how to make the most of them. The world is awash with green investment opportunities and Shaw will not find it hard to get among them.

But the planet won’t be saved just with relatively easy options like solar farms in the desert. Much more is required. For cattle ranchers in Brazil and palm oil farmers in Indonesia to agree to leave the forests standing, they require viable economic alternatives.

The answers are not obvious but it will take investment bankers like Shaw to find them and make it happen.

And there’s something else. It’s not enough for them to be doing good work. They also have to stop the bad work.

The world could get itself on track to reduce emissions below the Paris target of 1.5 per cent tomorrow, if banks, sovereign wealth funds and other investors simply refused to finance major corporate emitters.

But that’s not happening. On the contrary, everywhere from the seabed to the thawing tundra, there’s a renewed rush to plunder the as-yet unexploited fossil fuels and mineral resources of the planet.

Shaw is renowned for his skill in forging consensus agreements on climate action in Parliament. That skill will be much more severely tested when he’s facing down