The Sustainability Landscape Today – Issues, Regulation and Investment

Ilona Millar

Partner, Gilbert + Tobin

Ilona Millar leads Gilbert + Tobin’s Climate Change and Sustainability practice. She previously headed the climate change group of a global law firm and has worked for over 20 years on climate law and finance, including the development of law and policy and its implementation by both governments and the private sector. This experience extends to complex multi-jurisdictional transactions as well as the development of innovative responses to climate change and sustainability problems. Ilona has worked extensively on the development of carbon contracts, carbon funds and carbon transactions in both the compliance and voluntary markets. She also has a deep expertise in advising on natural sinks and forest-based carbon transactions as well as on geological sequestration and the legal frameworks for carbon capture and storage. More recently she has been leading work exploring the role of hydrogen in transitioning to a low carbon economy.

Sally Torgoman

Partner, KPMG

Sally is a partner in the Commercial Advisory & Transactions team in NSW, specialising in Energy within KPMG’s national Infrastructure, Assets & Places division. For more than 18 years, Sally has focused on major projects and transactions in energy generation, transmission, distribution, and retail. She is a dual qualified electrical engineer and lawyer with deep expertise in clean energy and decarbonisation-related investments across wind, solar, batteries, pumped hydro, transmission, hydrogen and gas infrastructure. Prior to KPMG, Sally worked with private enterprise and large corporate organisations cementing her capability to deliver commercial services to private and public clients.

David Jenkins

Global Head of Sustainable Finance Corporate & Institutional Banking, NAB

David leads NAB’s Sustainable Finance team and has been active in sustainable debt financing for over 10 years, having joined NAB in 2010. He works closely with treasury, risk, coverage, product and markets teams developing and originating sustainable financing and investment solutions for NAB’s clients across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, UK, Europe and the USA.  He has over 20 years of financial markets experience across a range of product solutions, origination and structuring roles for banks in Sydney, Hong Kong, London and New York.

David has worked with a broad range of clients including sovereigns, semi-governments, funds, financial institutions, corporates and securitisation issuers to establish their sustainable debt financing programmes.  The NAB Sustainable Finance team have arranged a broad range of innovative sustainable financing and investment solutions across a range of global markets including green, social, sustainability and sustainability linked bonds and loans, sustainability-linked derivatives, green deposits, green funds, green and social securitisations and green leasing solutions.

In December 2023, David was appointed to the Nature Finance Council which will advise the Australian Government, through the Minister for Environment & Water, on how to increase private sector financial flows to benefit nature, commercialise credible emerging nature markets and to position Australia as a global leader in nature finance.

David chairs the AFMA Sustainability Committee and is the sole Australian representative on the ICMA Principles Advisory Council.  He is an active participant in numerous industry bodies including the Australian Sustainable Finance Institute (ASFI), APLMA’s Green and Sustainable Loans Committee, Climate Bonds Standards Industry Working Groups, Institute of International Finance (IIF) Sustainable Finance WG and the Australian Securitisation Forum Sustainability Sub-committee.  He was recognised as one Australia’s 50 most influential corporate ESG leaders in the 2023 ESG Power50.