Investment insights: December 2023 quarter
Qantas Super had a strong end to the 2023 calendar year, with each of our investment options posting strong gains over the December quarter.
An update on our net zero carbon emissions goal
A year ago, Qantas Super announced our commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions across our investment portfolio by 2050.
As our Chief Investment Officer (CIO), Andrew Spence explained, Qantas Super made this commitment because we believe that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors increasingly impact investment returns and risks, and contribute to us delivering sustainable growth to our members.
In particular, we believe that climate change adaptation will drive significant investment to decarbonise existing businesses, and drive the creation of new businesses that don’t exist today. These changes represent terrific opportunities to generate great returns for members. At the same time, there are investment risks if action is not taken to understand and manage climate change issues.
Working towards net zero
Our net zero goal has been broken into three phases; in Phase 1, we aim to achieve a 24 percent reduction in carbon emissions from a 30 June 2020 baseline by 2025. In this time, we will:
- Research available low carbon benchmarks, and recommend a suitable benchmark to implement across our listed equities portfolio;
- Establish principles for any new private market investments to balance return opportunities against carbon intensity; and
- Develop strategies and find opportunities to implement sustainability enhancements for our fixed interest and private market investments
Our progress so far
We’ve made significant inroads towards this goal over the last 12 months. Here are a few of the key actions we’ve taken:
February 2022: Investment into Taronga Ventures
Taronga Ventures is a technology and innovation investor focused on creating a better built environment, through sustainable and responsible investment practices. It invests into scalable technology and innovation that enhances or challenges the traditional real estate and infrastructure sectors.
In February 2022, Qantas Super announced an investment into Taronga Ventures’ built environment technology fund. Through this fund, we’ll be investing in a range of innovative businesses making an impact, such as Carbon Cure, which reduces carbon within concrete, and Allume Energy, which has developed a system enabling power generated from a single rooftop solar system to be shared between multiple apartments or businesses within the same building.
March 2022: $2 billion investment in sustainable listed equities
This year, we partnered with leading global investment managers Calvert Research and Management and Goldman Sachs Asset Management to reduce carbon intensity across our Australian and global equity portfolios. We allocated $1 billion to each partner – the combined amount invested equates to almost a quarter of our total $8.5 billion funds under management.
Our CIO, Andrew Spence explained that with their long track record in responsible investing, Qantas Super believes these partnerships will enable the fund to meet our sustainability goals. These investment mandates are expected to result in a combined reduction of 50 percent carbon emissions relative to their respective benchmarks.
July 2022: $50 million investment into Ellerston’s 2050 Fund
We made a $50 million commitment to invest in Ellerston’s 2050 Fund, which focuses on investing in listed and unlisted small to mid-sized companies which actively help reduce carbon emissions in the wider economy.
These include companies with low carbon products, technology, and services that enable energy efficiency or facilitate the accelerated adoption of low emissions technologies. These companies represent a new area of economic growth and business development.
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Investment insights: June 2023 quarter
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