Only a few months ago, the Chair of the NZ Green Investment Fund (NZGIF) and Chancellor of the University of Auckland, Cecilia Tarrant, visited my "Law and Economics" class. Why? She's a lawyer who worked in "structured products" and "real estate finance" at Morgan Stanley in New York - and knows a Kiwi friend of mine who's at Google there. She presented some slides on the NZGIF. The first slide below is very green. The second features "NZGIF Solar Finance". The third shows how NZGIF has created a structure, via its Solar Finance vehicle, that "provides a simple and repeatable financing solution for solar energy". Its "cornerstone partner" is a company called Solar Zero, which provides an "investment grade" asset. Chancellor Tarrant is the nicest, friendliest person in the world - though I'd like to meekly comment that Solar Zero was put into liquidation two weeks ago and may end up costing the taxpayer, who is funding NZGIF, $100 million dollars. Turns out the structure that the Green Investment Fund provided was not "simple" nor "repeatable". Turns out its "cornerstone partner" was not made of stone, but subject to liquefaction. The power point slides are great and colorful, although I do wonder maybe in need of a little revising for next year's class. The NZ Green Investment Fund should itself be liquidated. NZ already prices carbon via our Emissions Trading Scheme. We can't afford "picking winner" subsidies when our economy has stagnated. Have the Greens thought about how scarce resources should be allocated between solar panels & helping the poor? Do they think this $100 million was better spent on panels - or on taking 100 families out of poverty? My preference is the latter.
