TONY JONES, PRESENTER: After abolishing the Climate Change Commission, the Government wants to scrap the financial corporation set up by Labor to make loans for renewable energy and efficiency.

On his first day in the job, the Treasurer Joe Hockey wrote to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the CEFC, asking it to stop investments until its repeal.

Now, independent legal advice backed by one of the country's top constitutional lawyers says the CEFC is legally obliged to ignore the minister's request.

But what does the corporation do, and if it's shut down, will it be missed? Kerry Brewster reports.

KERRY BREWSTER, REPORTER: From this Sydney tower, ex-Macquarie Banker Oliver Yates overseas the five-year, $10 billion program.

Since July, he's invested $560 million in taxpayer dollars, money that will come back with interest and a green dividend.

OLIVER YATES, CEO, CLEAN ENERGY FINANCE CORP.: I don't want to pay people for emission reductions, I want to make sure that they can finance themselves so they can achieve them at no cost to the taxpayer.

KERRY BREWSTER: One of the corporation's last loans was for a solar farm near Moree in NSW using this technology

LANE CROCKETT, PACIFIC HYDRO: It's an exciting project that'll bring a lot of jobs to that area and so that's great for the community of Moree. They're very excited about the project and so are we.

KERRY BREWSTER: Word's got out in the business community. The corporation says a new proposal arrives each day. Its investment pipeline holds 170 projects, 50 well advanced.

OLIVER YATES: The private sector is taking the equity risk and they're borrowing from us to achieve a positive outcome. The by-product is the emission savings. So we've calculated our own emission benefits that we think these projects are generating and in essence we're generating emission reductions at a profit.

KERRY BREWSTER: Pacific Hydro also received $70 million to complete a deal to finish its wind farm in Portland, Victoria.

LANE CROCKETT: They've lent those funds to Pacific Hydro at commercial interest rates. So we have to pay the money back and we pay it back at the same rates that we pay the commercial banks.

KERRY BREWSTER: The job will require 400 construction workers and dozens of Australian-made towers.

It's not all big. A Victorian council is switching to low energy streetlights. A Queensland chicken farm will soon generate 95 per cent of its electricity from its waste. And a world-first: in SA's Port Augusta solar is already desalinating seawater and heating greenhouses. Now with a $40 million loan, it'll scale up to 20 hectares, employing 200 workers. Sustainable agriculture for an arid future. A project Oliver Yates says no ordinary bank would have touched.

OLIVER YATES: If someone walked in to you and said, "I'm going to set up a fully solar thermal-operated greenhouse that's gonna make money out of selling tomatoes," and you were sitting in that investment bank you'd say, "Oh, you know, like, give me a break. You know, I don't have time to understand this, I've only got a budget cycle which is this long." And the banks are interested in having their key staff working on highly profitable deals of large size. What this transaction needs, it needs high quality staff who are willing to help it, coach it, mentor it, develop it, spend time with it so that it can get done.

KERRY BREWSTER: But for now at least, no more deals. The corporation has stopped lending after the Treasurer requested a halt until the body is abolished.

OLIVER YATES: At the moment we are hoping to go through a consultation period with the Government.

KERRY BREWSTER: Do you have an appointment yet to sit down with the Treasurer?

OLIVER YATES: We don't have an appointment yet. The Treasurer's been very busy. They've only just been in Parliament for a short period of time, so I'll give them all the benefit of the doubt that the fact they haven't scheduled a meeting is nothing more than the reality of life, not that they're not intending to schedule a meeting.

KERRY BREWSTER: Former Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who drafted the so-called "Abbott-proof" act under which the corporation functions, says the Government can't stop it.

MARK DREYFUS, FORMER ATTORNEY-GENERAL: It's a corporation with clear objects which are to lend money to the clean energy sector and the board of the corporation has to go on doing that task until the Parliament says otherwise. It's not open to this government to come along and seek to bully the directors, bully the corporation into stopping doing what their statute tells them to do.

KERRY BREWSTER: Senior constitutional lawyer George Williams agrees, but he believes the corporation's future is rocky.

GEORGE WILLIAMS, UNIVERSITY OF NSW: The legal position is clear that the Government can't direct this corporation to stop its work and I think the Government's own lawyers would likely recognise that. The Government would certainly try and get a new bill through Parliament to stop the organisation. It might try and interfere or actually direct who is going to be on the board through dismissal and appointment, or it might also look at the operating budget of the body over the longer term to try and starve it of the funds it needs to continue its work.

KERRY BREWSTER: How long can you pause until your corporation breaches the act?

OLIVER YATES: Well we have to operate within the law. So we will operate within the law and that will determine how long we can go through a consultation process for.

KERRY BREWSTER: But there's nothing in the act that says you can pause for X period of months?

OLIVER YATES: Well that's a decision for our board.

MARK DREYFUS: What's being put at risk is thousands of jobs that won't be created if the Clean Energy Finance Corporation doesn't go on with its work.

KERRY BREWSTER: Oliver Yates is hopeful that what he calls an open-minded review of this CEFC will persuade the Government of its value.

OLIVER YATES: We think lending to people and lending to the private sector produces a better outcome than a grants outcome, because if - you and I know that if you borrow money, you're gonna have to pay it back, and that means when you do it, you do it a lot more carefully than potentially if you get a grant.

KERRY BREWSTER: The Treasurer, Joe Hockey, was unavailable for comment.

Kerry Brewster, Lateline.