5.10
5.11
5.12
ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program
115
Table 5.2: Case studies reflecting the assessment of ‘grant funds per tonne of carbon abated’
Case Study
Program Application assessment Grant funds
per tonne of carbon
abated Merit
score Outcome
1 CTFFIP
The departmental assessor rejected this application
because the dollars per tonne of carbon abated was too high.
The Committee noted that there is ’flexibility to take other matters
into consideration, and the project aims to support [the]
transition to [a] low carbon environment. There is no firm
line drawn around per tonne of carbon’.
123.4 57.4 Supported
with conditions
2 CTIP
The committee ’liked the application but it was just too
expensive in comparison to the carbon price. There were no
components that could really be eliminated from the proposal. It
is a small grant but too expensive’.
100.3 58.4 Not supported
3 CTFFIP
The application was revised after the departmental assessor
told the applicant that the dollar per tonne cost of the project
was uncompetitive. The committee noted that ’it was not
only the dollars per tonne of CO
2 -e
that was causing concern to the Committee but the overall
size of the grant, more than 1.7m‘. A general discussion
followed in which it was suggested that a ’counter
offer…of 1 million‘ should be made to the company.
70.6 60.2 Supported
reframed project
Source: ANAO analysis of departmental records.
Recommendations to the program delegate
5.13 A
clear recommendation that identifies whether funding should be approved
promotes the transparency of the decision‐making process. In addition,
funding recommendations should explicitly address the extent to
ANAO Report No.11 2014–15 The Award of Grants under the Clean Technology Program
116
which the recommended grants are expected to result in the granting activity
achieving its objectives.
5.14 In
all cases, IA provided a clear funding recommendation to the program
delegate. However, the recommendation did not document:
the process that was used in forming recommendations, including any
limitations of the assessment performed;
the
reduction in carbon emissions or total carbon savings that were expected
to result from funding the project.
132
As a result, the executed funding
agreements for approved grants did not provide a:
clear target for the reduction in carbon emissions intensity for
35 approved grants; and
target
for the reduction in carbon emissions intensity that matched
the estimated reduction in the application, or the revised
reduction where applicable, for 100 approved grants;
whether the recommendation was based on the original application or
a reframed application only 57 of the 215 reframed applications that
were identified in Chapter 3 and recommended by the IA committees
were explicitly identified to the delegate as a reframed project; or
whether
the application scored highly against each merit criterion, as required
by the program guidelines.
5.15 In
respect to the program guidelines’ requirement that recommended applications
‘score highly against each merit criterion’, there was no minimum benchmark
set even though the IA committees’ recommendations were based, in
part, on the allocated merit score. Advice was not provided, by the program management
area of the department, on how this requirement should be interpreted
until late December 2012 10 months into the programs. Specifically,
on 21 December 2012, email advice was provided to departmental staff
noting a ‘couple of instances where the score was below 50 per cent for example,
a pass mark but was supported’; and advising that the overall merit score
must be greater than 50 out of 100 for grants of less than 1.5 million or 60
out of 120 for grants of 1.5 million or more for the project to be approved. This
was supplemented with a further email to assessors in May 2013 advising
132 The expected outcomes of grants were discussed in paragraph 2.72 to 2.75.
