CEFC finance will help Barwon Institutional Healthcare Property Fund improve the energy efficiency and comfort of a range of healthcare and medical facilities around Australia.
The CEFC is taking an $80 million equity stake in the Barwon Institutional Healthcare Property Fund which has 14 healthcare property assets across Australia and is planning to acquire more.
The investment will improve the energy performance of existing assets to achieve carbon emissions reductions of about 40 per cent when compared with the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Baseline Energy Consumption in commercial buildings.
Measures include rooftop solar, energy efficient Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, lighting upgrades and building monitoring systems.
The Barwon portfolio covers sites in Victoria, NSW, Queensland, ACT and WA, with a presence in regional Australia in Mackay and Gosford. It ranges from private hospitals to oncology services, pathology laboratories and mental health facilities.
Somerset Specialist Centre in Penrith, NSW is already under construction and due to be completed in late 2019. The four-storey facility will include radiation oncology and is expected to achieve a four and a half-star NABERS energy rating equivalent.
The Deakin Clinic in Canberra is a 50-bed psychiatric facility that will fill a much-needed gap in mental health services in the ACT.
Based on targeted outcomes, the improvements to the portfolio are expected to deliver reductions of just under 6,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually or just over 100,000 tonnes of abatement over the expected lifetime of the equipment. That’s the equivalent of removing around 1,270 passenger vehicles from the roads each year or the electricity use of about 1,000 homes each year.
The CEFC’s equity is part of a broader $375 million capital raising which involves several large Australian superannuation funds.