The grant opportunity provides eligible small and medium businesses up to $25,000 to purchase energy efficient equipment to reduce and manage energy usage and costs.

What do you get?

A grant of up to $25,000, to cover up to 100% of eligible expenditure. There is a total of $41.241 million available for this grant opportunity.

Grant funding will be distributed between states and territories based on the distribution of small and medium sized businesses nationally. Refer to Appendix A in the grant opportunity guidelines for a breakdown of funding in each jurisdiction.

We expect that there may be a high level of interest for this grant opportunity, and it may be oversubscribed. This is a demand driven grant opportunity. Grants will be awarded to eligible applicants on a first come, first served basis until the funding is exhausted in each jurisdiction.

Who is this for?

This grant opportunity is for small and medium sized businesses with an employee headcount of 1 to 199 employees.

Overview

The Energy Efficiency Grants for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Round 2 will support businesses to upgrade or replace inefficient equipment to improve their energy efficiency. These upgrades will enable industries to reduce their energy use, manage energy cost volatility in the long term and contribute to Australia’s target of a 43% reduction on 2005 emission levels by 2030.

The objectives of the program are:

  • improve energy efficiency practices and increase the uptake of energy efficient technologies
  • assist small and medium businesses to manage their energy usage and costs
  • reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The intended outcomes of the program are:

  • increase awareness of energy efficiency opportunities and help businesses to save energy
  • reduced power bills for small and medium businesses
  • emissions abatement to contribute to Australia reducing its emissions to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030.

Check if you can apply

You can apply if you meet the eligibility criteria. The eligibility criteria are a set of rules that describe who we can consider for this grant. You can apply if you:

  • are an eligible entity
  • have an eligible project
  • have eligible expenditure.

The rules are in the grant opportunity guidelines.

We cannot fund your project if you received any grant funding in the Energy Efficiency Grants for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Round 1 program.

You can only receive one Energy Efficiency Grants for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Round 2 grant per applicant (as determined by your ABN).

Who Can Apply

You can apply if you:

  • have an Australian business number (ABN)

and are one of the following entity types:

  • an entity incorporated in Australia
  • a partnership
  • a sole trader
  • an incorporated trustee on behalf of a trust.

You must also:

  • be a small or medium sized business with an employee headcount from 1 to 199 employees averaged over any consecutive 12 month period since 1 July 2020
  • be a small and medium sized businesses who has been in operation for a minimum of 24 months
  • have consent from the owner of the project location to undertake the project, if the entity is not the owner of the project location
  • provide the mandatory attachments listed at Section 6.1 of the grant opportunity guidelines.

You can’t apply if you are:

  • an organisation, or your project partner is an organisation, included on the National Redress Scheme’s list of Institutions that have not joined or signified their intent to join the Scheme
  • an employer of 100 or more employees that has not complied with the Workplace Gender Equality Act (2012)
  • a business that has more than 199 employees
  • an unincorporated association
  • any organisation not included in section 4.1 of the grant opportunity guidelines
  • a trust (however, an incorporated trustee may apply on behalf of a trust).
  • insolvent or have owners/directors that are bankrupt
  • a Commonwealth, state, territory or local government body (including government business enterprises, public schools, and public hospitals)
  • a non-corporate Commonwealth entity.

Eligible Projects

You must complete your project by 31 March 2025. The maximum project length is 12 months.

Your project must:

  • be aimed at reducing the energy consumption of your business in Australia
  • have at least $10,000 in eligible expenditure
  • be limited to one or more of the activities listed in Appendix B of the grant opportunity guidelines
  • be entirely located within the state or territory (jurisdiction) you are applying for.

Project Funding

You can apply for a grant between $10,000 and $25,000.

You can use this grant funding for:

  • an energy audit of your site or part of your site
  • purchase or hire of equipment to measure, monitor and record energy use or to monitor a process, where this facilitates optimisation or energy management
  • purchase of new equipment to replace, or upgrade, existing equipment, where the new equipment is higher energy efficiency
  • costs to decommission, remove and dispose of the old equipment that is replaced
  • purchase of new equipment or components to help an existing system run more efficiently in regard to energy
  • design, and reasonable installation costs of new eligible equipment, including any necessary wiring or other electrical work required to enable the project
  • commissioning or tuning of equipment installed or modified as part of the project, and any related equipment that is affected by the project
  • building permits or approval costs to install equipment, where required
  • the cost of suppliers, consultants and contracted labour undertaking eligible project activities.

Where a project activity includes purchase of equipment, applicants must purchase new equipment only (not used/second hand equipment).

How To Apply

You can go to this link to apply directly through business.gov.au by CLICKING HERE

More Information

You can go to this link HERE

Government has advised that the funds will be allocated on a first come basis – so you if you feel you have a project that is eligible please give us a call for assistance or ensure you get you application in as quickly as possible. Applications close on 8 April 2024. Call us on 49 264155 or email your TSP team member directly or admin@tspaccountants.com.au