For Access to Funding

ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program 83

3.28 Specifically,

if an application was considered to be ‘uncompetitive’, the program management area of the department advised assessors to remove project costs in the first instance 98 and to then consider reducing the amount of grant funding sought. 99 Further guidance on reducing the grant amount was provided to assessors in March 2013 and noted that the IA committees considered that: the core of any project should have significant carbon and energy savings, and if the project overall is good value for money then a lower grant ratio is acceptable. However, if the project appears to be primarily about productivity gains and energy and carbon savings are only marginal, then a reduced grant ratio to achieve a good Merit Criterion 1 score is not likely to be acceptable. 100

3.29 In

this respect, there were:  34 applications that were reframed to improve the competitiveness of the project and were approved by the program delegate; and  22 applications that were reframed to improve the competitiveness of the project, but were not approved by the program delegate.

3.30 Of

the 34 applications that were approved, there were at least four cases in which integral components, such as pre‐project activities, were excluded from the project and two cases in which the grant amount was reduced to an acceptable amount. However, there were also applications for 98 For example, the assessment records in respect to one application stated as follows: ‘ The project was reframed because the original project was not considered to be competitive, at 128.90 of grant funding per tonne of CO2-e savings estimated over the life of conservation measure. To reframe the project, costs not directly related to achieving carbon savings were removed. The costs removed from the project are: pre-project developmental work; sample production; five instances of testing, including chemical, material and pressure burst testing; cost of first fill of chemical oil; consumables, project management; engineering technician support; purchase and installation of monitoring equipment; and post-project monitoring and evaluation and financial audit. The exclusion of these activities will not affect the outcome of the project, as [the applicant] is still planning to undertake all of the activities originally listed in their application. ’ 99 For example, in respect to one application the assessor recorded as follows: ‘[the company] has elected to apply for a reduced grant percentage of 16.93 in recognition of the fact that moving its plant to Victoria will result in a more expensive cost of emissions abatement than if it were to remain in Queensland, due to the higher Victorian CO2-e emissions factor. The project is a single measure project. As a result it is not possible to remove elements of it and pursuit of an amended grant percentage is the only way to increase the competiveness of the application ’. 100 The above statement indicates that the eligibility of projects was not comprehensively assessed, because, under the program guidelines, projects that were solely about productivity gains were not eligible for funding. In the eligibility stage, assessors were required to check whether the project related to one or more of the eligibility types of emissions reduction measures replacement of or modification to plant, equipment or process or changing the energy sources for existing plant and equipment. Assessors were not required to check that these activities would involve activities that were expected to deliver carbon savings.   