Infrastructure report: Westpac's Andrew Bashford and Joanna Silver on climate change and infrastructure

Andrew Bashford.

Andrew Bashford

When we're talking about infrastructure, it's not just about building and designing new stuff. Clearly, it's modifying what we've already got, but actually, probably more importantly, it's about how can you use infrastructure to support decarbonisation and mitigate risk.

How do you influence the infrastructure strategy, so you actually change consumer demand?

Talking about electrification and the use of electric vehicles, and having fast-charging stations throughout the whole country - if you took that approach, that could actually have a massive change in terms of people buying cars, the types of cars and the way they use them.

I think a lot of the thinking needs to involve basically climate change scientists.
So, what I haven't seen in a lot of documents that have been published is the science around it.

And then what that means, both for opportunities and challenges for infrastructure. You probably need to bring a team together with those subject matter experts to help develop that coherent connected strategy for the next 20-30 years.

Joanna Silver.

Joanna Silver

From a climate policy perspective the new Government's only a few weeks old. And it was very clear last term, that was the term to set up frameworks, institutions and architecture to help with cutting emissions: the Zero Carbon Bill, Climate Change Commission, Green Investment Fund, and also mandating climate risk reporting.

We haven't actually cut emissions yet, in fact, we're on track to increase them.
So this is the term to actually reduce emissions. When the Climate Change Commission's draft budgets come out in February and then get implemented by Government, that's going to set up the policy environment for business to respond.

I would expect that soon we will see a strategy from Government around infrastructure. A 2030-2050 strategy that aligns infrastructure to those climate changes and societal priorities.

The UK National Infrastructure commission put out a report a couple of months ago on commission recommendations and the net zero target and did a gap analysis.
It would be great to see the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission replicating that over here.

Andrew Bashford is Head of Institutional Relationships, Institutional & Business Banking at Westpac NZ.

Joanna Silver is Head of Sustainable Finance, Institutional & Business Bank Westpac NZ.