Government fund that invested in SolarZero to be wound down
Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Green Investment Finance, a fund that was established by the former government to support investments in emissions-reducing ventures, will be terminated, the Government has announced.
The decision follows anger among ministers over the fund’s failed investment in rooftop solar installer SolarZero, which had been the fund’s largest single bet.
SolarZero was put into liquidation in November after its directors admitted it was incurring unsustainable operating losses, but not before it had drawn down about $115 million in loans from Green Investment Finance (NZGIF).
NZGIF’s chairperson Cecilia Tarrant resigned a fortnight after SolarZero’s collapse, days after being called into a Beehive meeting with Finance Minister Nicola Willis.
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts said NZGIF had invested $400m in total “with very limited results”.
It would stop making new investments and would wind down its existing portfolio, he said.
There were more than 20 other government funds operating with “similar objectives”, he said.
“Alongside this, the market for low-emission investments has grown; there are more funding and financing products, and we have a more robust Emissions Trading Scheme, reducing the need for government involvement.”
Watts said NZGIF would develop a plan for implementing the wind-down over the next 90 days.
As of June 2023, NZGIF had 28 employees, according to its last annual report.
ACT Party finance spokesperson Todd Stephenson said the fund was “the kind of greenwashed corporate welfare ACT has railed against for years”.
But Green Party energy spokesperson described its wind-down as “yet another cut to another climate programme”.
The fund had helped facilitate “lifetime emissions reductions” of between 1.3 and 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which was more than New Zealand’s emissions from domestic aviation in 2022,” he said.
“NZGIF was an early supporter of Lodestone Energy, providing $15m of working capital in 2023 to finance its first solar farms. Lodestone is now the largest utility-scale solar developer in New Zealand.”