What your dollars did: 10 years of building a better future
Since Future Super was founded 10 years ago, we’ve grown to become a major player, with a voice for the climate that gets louder with every new member who joins.
To mark our birthday, we take a look back at just some of the amazing things that have been making a positive difference to the world, as a result of our members investing their super with purpose.
While growing your wealth, your membership with Future Super has also helped to:
1. Take money out of bad stuff
We love to talk about all the things Future Super invests in. But equally important is what we don’t invest in. Keeping money out of specific industries empowers us to influence positive change and stand up for our members’ values. We call this screening, it’s a huge part of what we do, and you can find out more in our screening strategy.
When we started in 2014, we were the first super fund in Australia to completely screen out investments in fossil fuel companies. We also added screens for weapons, tobacco, nuclear, animal welfare and human rights.
In 2017 we collaborated with Betashares to create our first (of many) negatively screened ETF. This let us execute our screened investments more quickly, and created a sustainable investment product that non-members could also invest in.
We actively monitor the companies we invest in, holding them accountable for their actions – not just through a climate lens. Although Tesla has a renewables focus, repeated reports of poor working conditions eventually led us to filter the company out of some of our investment options in 2021.
We also shine a light on gender equity, screening out all-male boards on publicly listed companies from Future Super’s investments. Future Super champions diversity, and gender-diverse boards are leading the way in the ASX-200.
2. Combat homelessness
Since 2017, Future Super has invested in the Aspire Social Impact Bond. This bond funds the delivery of the Aspire Program, an intervention program that helps homeless participants to access secure housing in South Australia. In partnership with the South Australian government, Aspire helps participants into stable accommodation, employment training and life skills development, with the long-term support of a dedicated ‘Navigator’ (similar to a support worker) to help each individual achieve their goals.
In the program’s first six years, 467 participants were placed in secure housing via an investment model that rewards positive outcomes. The SA Government makes payments based on cost savings from a reduction in hospital bed days, criminal convictions and emergency accommodation stays by participants. So basically, the better the program’s participants do, the better investors in the bond (that’s you) do!
3. Return Country to traditional owners
One of our investments has helped the Kullilli people in south-west Queensland to buy back land that most Kullilli ancestors were forcibly removed from between the 1880s and 1960s. Conscious Investment Management’s Impact Fund (which sits in the portfolios of our Balanced Impact and Renewables Plus Growth options) helped to buy the 47,100-hectare Thargomindah Station, which will earn a return on the investment via carbon farming. Basically, the traditional owners are restoring the land in a way that supports indigenous culture as well as earning carbon credits under a licence with the Clean Energy Regulator.
After a century of dispossession, the traditional owners were able to return to Thargomindah to implement “traditional knowledge alongside innovative land management and sustainable agricultural practices to regenerate native forest and heal Country”. It’s triple win for the climate, for traditional ownership and for your investment portfolio!
4. Crunch the renewables numbers
We have a clear vision at Future Super. We want to see all of Australia’s superannuation savings divested out of fossil fuels and invested to drive positive social and environmental impacts. That’s around a $3.9tn pool of capital – a serious amount of muscle. But what could that level of investment achieve?
We wanted to find out how much Aussie super would be needed to fund the energy transition and meet Australia’s climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.
So, in 2018 we commissioned the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) to crunch the numbers. The study (updated in 2021 to reflect falling solar costs and rising pool of capital) found that just 7.2% of the total superannuation pool could transition Australia’s energy sector to 100% renewable energy and meet the Paris Agreement’s 2030 milestone. And just 9.5% would allow Australia’s complete decarbonisation (including transport and industry) by 2050.
Despite this, Australia’s big banks and super funds continue to invest in fossil fuel expansion, and Australia remains the world's second-largest exporter of coal and LNG. If all Australian super was screened like Future Super, we could change our decarbonisation trajectory.
5. Power up clean energy
Future Super’s investments are helping turn Aussie sunshine into a clean energy future. One of our major investments is with Infradebt Ethical Fund, which provides financing to solar farms across Australia as well as wind, batteries and infrastructure. Grid-level batteries are key to securing a renewables-powered supply; Infradebt reports that over the past seven years, battery capacity in the National Electricity Market has grown from 0.1GW to 1.4GW, with an extra 5.3GW due to come online in the next two years.
Future Super has an investment with electricity retailer ZEN Energy, which supplies clean renewable energy, supports domestic solar installations and develops grid-level battery storage, including the new Templers BESS project in South Australia that will store enough energy to power 96,000 homes for over 2.5 hours.
Meanwhile, an investment with Birdwood Business Finance supports the installation of rooftop solar on buildings such as shopping centres, warehouses, large apartment complexes and farms. These are big buildings, with big rooftops. Each solar watt they generate creates income for both the generator and for investors – that’s you!
6. Provide specialist disability housing
Investment from Future Super is helping address the national shortage of specialist disability accommodation. Up to 30,000 Australians are expected to need specialist disability accommodation by 2025, with standard housing stock being unable to meet their needs. Australian Unity’s Specialist Disability Fund invests in and owns purpose-built, next-level specialist housing that enables people with disabilities to live as independently as possible. Features like wheelchair-accessible bathrooms, height-adjustable cupboards, enhanced fire detection and suppression – and most importantly, proximity to shops and community connections – all allow residents to thrive.
The fund invests in specialist disability housing, managed by Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) providers who act as landlords. Rent is partly covered by the NDIS, with tenants paying the rest. The fund is part of your alternative investments portfolio if you’re in Balanced Impact, Renewables Plus Growth or High Growth options. Thank you for helping plug the disability housing gap - with style.
7. Powered 65 beach cleans
Plastic is everywhere: in our oceans, our soil and even our bodies. We all know it, we all hate it, and we can all do something about it. Future Super sponsors Emu Parade, a Sydney-based coffee-van enterprise that organises caffeine-fuelled beach cleans along NSW beaches – 65 so far. The van is an old fire truck called Trish, converted to run on used vegetable oil from Sydney restaurants.
We know (from participating in several ourselves) that team beach cleanups aren’t just about picking up trash – they're about building a better world and forging human connections. And these ones also include the reward of awesome free coffee from Trish’s baristas! Best of all, they help protect marine life and keep our waters safer.
8. Build a solar farm
Future Super is the only super fund invested in Cosgrove solar farm in Victoria. As part of our commitment to the renewable energy transition, Future Super’s Renewables Plus Growth option invested in this through the Green Squares Energy Trust. Cosgrove is a 7.5MW solar farm about 20kms outside of Shepperton.
It powered up in May 2024 and is on track to deliver clean renewable energy to more than 1,500 homes. With demand for electricity continuing to rise, selling solar watts is big business – and takes the power out of fossil fuels, which is the future we all want to see.
9. Support 17 threatened species
In 2019, the massive Murray-Darling river system reached record low levels due to drought and extraction for farm irrigation. In 2022, a fund that Future Super invests in made the largest donation of private water in Australian history, replenishing 21 wetlands with 5.2 gigalitres of freshwater.
Kilter Rural’s Murray-Darling Basin Balanced Water Fund is able to track the financial and natural benefits this brings, balancing the needs of irrigators, the environment and investors through counter-cyclical water use.
The good news for nature and climate is the improved state of the wetlands, measured via tree health and biodiversity. The reinvigorated habitat supports 46 woodland bird species and 59 waterbirds, including struggling species like Australasian bitterns (which only live in dense reeds); plus river swamp wallaby-grass, Murray River rainbowfish and more. It also enabled the return of the Murray hardyhead fish, which had previously vanished from the area. It’s a massive win for our wildlife as well as rural communities.
10. Normalise menstrual & menopause leave
Part of our advocacy around closing the super gender gap focuses on changing the way we all work. Period symptoms meet inflexible working arrangements, people miss out – by missing work, and often pay. Pretty unfair for something that affects half of the population.
Future Super’s employees are therefore entitled to take additional paid leave if they are affected by menstruation or menopause. And no, they don’t max it out. Instead, this policy has boosted engagement and retention among our staff, to the extent we thought it was a great idea to make our policy open-source so that other employers can use it, too. In fact, we made many of our staff policies open-source. Building better workplaces will increase diversity, gender equity and – ultimately – superannuation balances.
We’ve got Australia talking; sparking debate in Parliament about whether this policy should be written into workplace law. Watch this space! Discussing issues around menstruation and menopause encourages an open, inclusive vibe that reduces stigma around a natural, unavoidable process.
Remember, these great things have all happened because you chose to grow your wealth in a way that builds a future worth retiring into. But we’re not done. We won’t rest until the superannuation industry stops funding the fossil fuel industry and invests in line with Australia’s commitments to curbing climate change.
The more people who join, the louder our voice, the faster we can drive positive change and get Australia back on course.
Investments may be held indirectly via an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) or Managed Fund (MF). See futuresuper.com.au/how-we-invest/ for information about our screening and investment processes, and what we mean by fossil fuel companies and investments.