As the head of a renewable energy business with $US9 billion in revenue and 30,000 wind turbines operating globally, Anne McEntee is well placed to advise Australia on the transition to a world of diversified and distributed energy generation.
Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg would have heard McEntee speak in Sydney this week, so there is hope that some wisdom from the private sector will filter through to the next meeting of the Council of Australian Governments.
That is not to say that Frydenberg needs to have wayward views corrected. He is one of the few political leaders who understands the complexity of managing a system with intermittent sources of power.
One telling quote from Frydenberg at this week's Clean Energy Summit in Sydney dealt directly with the recent price spikes in South Australia. "People have to understand that this volatility is not a new thing. It was back there in 2008 ... so to say that is the fault of renewables is not an accurate assessment," he said. 
McEntee agrees with Frydenberg that the transition to a new era of generation with a growing proportion of renewables requires considerable planning and "getting out in front" of the problem of intermittency.
But her most telling advice is in relation to policy certainty beyond 2020, which is the deadline for the current renewable energy target. "If you bring it back to Australia I think it is that clarity of policy that is so important," she says.
"Investors are waiting on the sidelines right now to see how the off-takes are established. I think that's really the big challenge. Around the world investors have many options to invest in renewable energy with long-term PPAs [power purchase agreements, so it comes down to a risk profile - the risk versus the reward."
McEntee says in many countries developers of renewable projects are signing 15- and 20-year PPAs. These are in line with the life cycles of the equipment.
"It's a much lower risk for investors to guarantee the returns," she says. "So as we think about the future of Australia, I applaud the government for the renewable energy target, but how far out is that going to go?
"Are people going to see a long-term stable position? And how the 'gentailers' decide to procure that renewable energy is extremely important, because it is going to take more innovative financial structures to get the financial community to come in and actually commit."
McEntee says the move by AGL Energy to partner with QIC and the Future Fund in a new renewable energy fund is a great example of innovation in finance and more of this will be needed.
In GE's case its innovative finance package in Australia was for the Ararat wind farm in Victoria, which was the first major wind farm contract to be signed following restored bipartisan support for the RET.
GE said the 240MW Ararat Wind Farm would be the third-largest wind farm in Australia and had attracted almost $500 million of direct international investment into Victoria.
McEntee said the Ararat wind farm included a creative financial structure with a mix of contracted power and merchant power. She says GE will be able to use that in other projects in Australia.
An estimated $10 billion of investment in renewables will occur over the next five to six years.
"As the generating companies decide on how they are going to remix their portfolios, I think there is opportunity in this country and that is why we are here this week," she says.
Banks vie for NSW contract
Westpac Banking Corp and Commonwealth Bank of Australia are the frontrunners to win Australia's biggest single banking contract, but NSW Treasury secretary Rob Whitfield is encouraging National Australia Bank and ANZ Banking Group to have a go.
Discussions between the government and banks interested in pitching for the contract to supply all government banking services started about two weeks ago, even though the existing five-year contract does not expire until 2017.
One of the key criteria for winning this lucrative contract is being able to help the NSW government transition to a radical new way of managing government finances.
NSW Premier Mike Baird wants to abandon the silo approach to fiscal accountability and replace it with a system that will allow collaboration across different departments.
Senior executives from Westpac and CBA have already met NSW Treasury officials handling the tender.
The contract, which is held by Westpac, is going to tender in a different form to previously. The new contract dovetails with a complete change in the management of public finances in NSW.
Whitfield told Chanticleer on Thursday that this time around the NSW government would look at it as part of a "financial management transformation".
"We are investing in a once-in-a-generation electronic digital capability to run the government finances," he says.
The transformation project is being led by Simone Constant, who is deputy secretary of NSW Treasury in charge of financial risk management and financial risk transformation.
A new financial management system running on Oracle cloud software is being implemented by systems integration staff from PwC. The new system will replace 30-year-old legacy systems.
Whitfield says the NSW government is taking off-the-shelf software and customising it for government purposes.
The transformation of the NSW government finances requires new legislation to allow expenditure measures to be managed across different government departments.
"If you think about childhood obesity, which is one of the premier's priorities, you are going to need the involvement of a number of different departments," Whitfield says.
"The health department might be in charge of it, but you are going to need the sports department, because of activity and kids, and the education department, because of nutrition education - a number of departments will play a role.
"In this new financial system we will budget that way. Everybody will contribute in horizontally across departments and it will be transparent and everybody will see each other's numbers.
"At the moment all government work, the whole $75 billion, is down industry silos, with the three biggest being education, health and transport.
"We are going to transition in the 2017-18 budget - it will be the first budget going horizontally across departments."
Whitfield admits this transformation carries huge risks.
"There are risks on the IT system and risks from a cultural side on whether we can make that change of thinking," he says.
"The two big tools of government disappear - the ability for a premier to hold a minister and a secretary accountable entirely down the departmental vertical."
In the past, an initiative in the health department would involve the cost being covered within the $21 billion spending in the "health cluster". The health minister and departmental secretary would be accountable. In the brave new world of horizontal program funding, there will be multiple departments involved which will require "thinking and working collaboratively, Whitfield says.
Whitfield, who has just marked 12 months in the job, says that the changed nature of the contract means that the incumbent, Westpac, could lose the advantage of holding the business.
"We certainly like to think that because we are starting from a greenfield approach and really trying to bring innovation to it that perhaps it should feel like a more even playing field than the obvious advantages the incumbent would normally have," he said.
"If we were just doing more of the same, the incumbent banker would have more of an advantage, because you have to make all the risk of transitioning to a new provider, you have to have a payoff to make that worthwhile."