Marinus Link and wind farm revival helps green bank smash six-month investment record

It’s not just renewables developers who ended the year on a record-breaking spree, with the country’s green bank investing more money in clean energy projects in the second half of 2025 than any previous six-month period.

The latest investment update from the federal government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has revealed that it put $6.1 billion into 26 deals in the last half of 2025, or almost a quarter of all the investments it’s ever made. 

More than half of those loans and investment went into the Marinus Link transmission project between Tasmania and Victoria, at $3.8 billion. 

Of the deals, 19 were new and seven were follow-on investments. 

“Our activity during the six months to December 2025 demonstrates why the CEFC is a critical lever in Australia’s race to net zero,” said CEFC chief Ian Learmonth in the organisation’s half year investment update. 

“New CEFC commitments are providing momentum for net zero ambitions in natural capital, working alongside First Nations communities in the Tiwi Islands. We also invested in transport, infrastructure and property, as well as backing Australia’s exciting climate tech innovators with early stage capital.

“We are seeing more CEFC concessional finance flow to Australian households, via the Household Energy Upgrades Fund, and to businesses, for rooftop solar, battery storage and electric vehicles.”

Breaking the large-scale wind drought

The confident levels of spending were assisted by extra cash from the federal government, which promised another $2 billion to finance large scale renewable energy.

It then lent to three of the four wind projects which reached financial close in December – the first in 2025 – with $247 million spread across the three. 

Aula Energy’s 256 megawatt (MW) Carmody’s Hill project in South Australia was one of these, taking in the CEFC’s biggest wind investment for the half of $147 million.

The CEFC was an important provider of lower cost finance to wind and solar projects in past years but more recently it’s focused on transmission projects, green loans, EVs and home electrification.

The half year update highlighted the $40 million it invested in a First Nations collaboration in the Tiwi Islands to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) from timber plantations, a $70 million loan to Volvo to speed up truck electrification in Australia, and $50 million to electrify student housing owned by Scape Australia. 

With three large scale deals at the end of 2025, the CEFC is back into renewable energy project financing, as other investors particularly in wind shy away from the technically and socially challenging sector. 

Stayin’ alive

Some of the CEFC’s previous investments are bearing fruit as well. 

It says $785 million came back into its coffers through sales and repayments of

investments in the second half of 2025, a sizeable portion of the $6.7 billion recouped since the CEFC started investing in 2013. 

The fact that the CEFC is still around to make these kinds of investments is impressive in its own right, given the efforts that Liberal governments over the years have made to get rid of it. 

Tony Abbott tried to abolish the green bank, only to be stymied by the Senate, and in 2015 then-treasurer Joe Hockey ordered it to stop investing in wind and small solar projects. 

That ban was overturned by the end of the year, but with a proviso to focus on offshore wind. 

In 2020 and 2021, when now-Coalition leader Angus Taylor was energy minister, the government tried and failed to shoehorn gas investments such as carbon capture and storage into the CEFC mandate, with no requirement for these to make a profit.

If you would like to join more than 28,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, please click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.