However, The Access to Funding

ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 78 24 reframed during the IA committee assessment. 92 In this regard, the department made changes to application forms in December 2012 to require further information on the individual components of projects with multiple emissions reduction measures including the costs and predicted electricity, fuel or direct carbon emissions abated by each measure 93 ; and  11 applications were reframed so that the applicant would receive the maximum amount of funding available under the grant ratios all of these changes were made during the departmental assessment. 94

3.17 Other

reasons for reframing applications included changes to project costs and to projects in instances where the application did not provide sufficient evidence to support the claims made in relation to a component of the project where that component was separable. A clear reason for changing the grant amount was not documented in respect to 13 of the reframed applications.

3.18 The

department’s perspective on the reframing of applications was outlined to ANAO in October 2014, as follows: The Department acknowledges that the approach adopted is not suitable for all granting programs, but was considered appropriate for the Clean Technology Programs which involved investing in capital equipment. Applications and assessments contained objective information on the capital equipment, for example manufacturing specifications, energy audits and utility bills. This enabled individual emission reduction measures to be easily dissected for analysis. A ‘reframed project’ refers to a class of projects where the original scope of the project as submitted in the application was: changed by the Committee during the merit assessment process; or changed by the applicant, or by the Customer Service Manager in consultation and full agreement with the applicant, during the due diligence process before merit assessment by the Committee. 92 There were three applications that were reframed during the departmental assessment and the IA committee assessment. Therefore, a total of 77 applications were reframed to exclude expenditure that did not provide value for money. 93 This was suggested by the IA committee in May 2012. 94 Two of the 12 applications that were reframed up to the maximum grant ratio available to the applicant were not recommended by the IA committees because the application did not demonstrate that the total carbon savings over the life of the project would be commensurate with the level of investment.  ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 79 Many of the projects included a number of different capital investment activities, often unrelated. Part of Innovation Australiaʹs consideration of