Page 13 - Luce 2023

Point of View

Yasawa Islands, Fiji

Emissions Trading Scheme to include Pacific Island Countries.
A solution? Every year Australia – the largest donor in the
Pacific – commits A$1.5 billion in direct support to the
Pacific, and recently announced it was increasing the size
of its Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the
Pacific to A$4 billion and would increase its focus on climate
infrastructure financing. But this is to do ‘more of the same’. It
fails to address the fundamental challenges: a lack of capacity,
a lack of quality developers, limited-to-no secondary market
for operating assets, and near zero private sector investment.
But these challenges are not new and successful international
examples exist, eg. Climate Investor One. There are examples
that deliver comprehensive end-to-end support to develop,
build, own, operate and finance renewable energy projects
across the Pacific; coordinate international advisory agencies
to provide objective, independent advice to the governments
and utilities of the Pacific; and leverage donor funding to
‘de-risk’ projects and attract private sector investment to the Conference Travel, Pacific style (courtesy of RAAF)
region.

This more hands-on end-to-end model establishes a parallel Lachlan studied electrical engineering and physics at
pathway to dramatically accelerate the roll-out of renewables Melbourne University, law at ANU and Cambridge
across the Pacific and materially reduces the need for scarce University, business at Harvard and applied finance
donor funding. at ANU.

The challenges for the roll-out of renewables across the Pacific After initially working in micro and automotive
are manifold. But with careful consideration of stakeholder electronics, he worked briefly as an IP & IT litigation
needs, solutions do exist and represent an important lawyer before moving into venture capital for ten years
opportunity for donor agencies and private sector investors investing in medical devices, materials technologies, and
alike. Most importantly, however, they represent a potentially wind energy ventures. He has also worked in research
transformative opportunity for the people and nations of the commercialisation and renewable energy policy in
Yasawa Islands, Fiji the ACT.
Pacific to transition to a cleaner, greener, more sustainable
energy future.
After almost three decades, Lachlan and his family
returned to Melbourne in 2021. More recently, he has
Lachlan James (1989)
been working to develop a fund for renewable energy
projects in the Pacific and is also on the Commonwealth
Government’s R&D Tax Incentives Committee.

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