[Speaker: Vanya Kumar]
Hello everyone and welcome the Energy Innovation Fund Industry Briefing for Round 3.
My name is Vanya Kumar and I am the Executive Director of the Innovation, Commercial and Investment Attraction Division in the Energy Group here at the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. I’d like to thank you all for joining and we are so pleased to see so many of you here today.
Today, we will be providing an overview of round 3 of EIF which targets the electrification of Victoria’s food and beverage processing and manufacturing sector.
Before we get started, I’d firstly like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which each of us is meeting today. I am on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri People and I wish to acknowledge them as Traditional Owners. I would also like to pay my respect to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be with us today.
I'll now run you through the contents of today's session and provide some introductions to the other speakers you're going to hear from today.
Emma Dunne, the Director of Major Energy Projects will take you through some housekeeping and overarching details of the Energy Innovation Fund.
Michelle Andrews, acting Manager Energy Innovation Fund, will take you through the key details of the application process and Chris Iape, Senior Policy Officer at the Victorian Energy Upgrades program, will provide an overview of the VEU program.
This programme and the solar homes programs are materially reducing the up-front costs of going electric and improving energy efficiency. The VEU programee may also be an alternative option for your business to support electrification and Chris will run you through what the program offers shortly.
Before I hand over to Emma, I would just like to do some context setting and provide some further detail in terms of where this fund sits in the Government’s ambitious energy agenda.
As many of you will know, Victoria’s energy sector is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the retirement of thermal generation and the accelerated uptake of lower-cost, renewable energy sources.
The Victorian Government understands that energy costs directly affect the productivity and competitiveness of Victorian businesses.
Victoria’s integrated energy transition is helping energy users cut costs and ease financial pressures, while moving to cleaner, more efficient energy solutions. In the last financial year, Victoria’s average wholesale price was 40% lower than New South Wales, 29% lower than South Australia, 19% lower than Queensland, and 7% lower than Tasmania.
Electrifying is also critical to achieving the State’s legislated energy targets of 65 per cent renewable electricity generation by 2030, 95 per cent by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2045.
Victoria’s Gas Substitution Roadmap outlines a clear direction for bringing on new gas supply sources, where possible, while supporting the transition away from fossil gas to reduce pressure on Victoria’s declining legacy gas fields.
Given the importance of industrial food and beverage production in Victoria’s economy, there are opportunities to improve the support to transition away from gas, which has seen significant price increases in Australia and internationally.
We know that the food and beverage businesses often depend on fossil gas for industrial processes, continuous operations and maintaining product quality.
The EIF brings intellectual property, innovation, local economic development and environmental benefits to the State, local businesses and communities. These are achieved through supporting activities that progress innovative projects in their commercialisation continuum including front-end-engineering-design, large scale pilots and demonstrations.
Round 3 of the EIF will is dedicated to accelerating the deployment of electrification technologies in the food and beverage sector and the four broad objectives: support the achievement of Victoria’s net-zero carbon emission target by 2045 enable the development, demonstration, and scaling of emerging technologies priorities, improve energy efficiency and reduce reliance on volatile fossil gas markets and strengthen local food production and processing capacity by enabling sustainable, low-emissions growth that supports long-term sector viability. Boost Victorian industrial competitiveness as Victoria achieves legislated emission reduction targets.
I hope you enjoy today’s session and I’ll now pass over to Emma to discuss housekeeping and the broader Energy Innovation Fund.
Emma, over to you.
[Speaker: Emma Dunne]
Thanks, Vanya, and hi, everyone. We're really pleased to see so many of you here on the call today, particularly on the eve of this long weekend. It's great to see such a strong interest in the program before we get into the detail of today's presentation, there are just a couple of housekeeping items to run through.
Your microphone should automatically be muted and your camera off for the duration of the call. But if you have any questions during the session, you're welcome to use the Q&A function, which I think should be to the left of your screen.
Unfortunately, we may not have time to answer all questions directly in the session today but we will be reviewing all of the questions afterwards and for probing and process reasons, we'll provide written responses via the frequently asked questions document, which is on our website and will be updated shortly after the session.
Alternatively, you're welcome to e-mail your questions through to us anytime via the e-mail on the screen energy.innovation@deeca.vic.gov.au.
We'll respond to you by e-mail as well as update the frequently asked questions document as new questions are raised. And thank you to those also that e-mailed questions ahead of the session today.
We've done our best to answer these in the presentation but we'll also upload responses to these in our frequently asked questions document shortly. I'll also just mention that today's session will be recorded and also uploaded to the Energy Innovation Fund website along with the slides that we'll be talking through today.
Lastly, and we hope this doesn't happen, but if there are any technical difficulties that arise throughout the session, we'll do our best to fix these. But if for some reason we can't proceed, the session will be rescheduled, and you'll receive an e-mail notification of the updated timing.
Before we take you through the assessment and application process, we thought it would be helpful just to provide a brief overview of the Energy Innovation Fund and the focus for this third funding round. As you most likely know and as Vanya mentioned earlier, Victoria's Energy Sector is undergoing a significant transformation.
Really driven by the retirement of the coal power stations and the increased uptake of renewable energy. In response to this transition, the Energy Innovation Fund, which was established in 2021, was designed to support the commercialisation of the types of innovative emerging and renewable energy technologies that will be required in the future.
The fund is being delivered as a grant program and we've delivered two rounds to date. The first round was dedicated to offshore wind and round two was technology neutral and supported a range of technology types.
If you're interested at all in any of the projects that have been supported by these earlier rounds, there's more information available on these on the Energy Innovation Fund website. But today, we're here to talk to you about round three of the fund, which was launched on the 25th of June this year with guidelines released earlier this week.
As you will have likely seen, this round is dedicated to industrial electrification, with a particular focus on the food and beverage processing and manufacturing sector and supporting businesses to electrify. So making the switch from traditional fossil gas to electricity.
So for this round, the focus is on the food and beverage manufacturing and processing sector and really this is in recognition of the significance of this sector to the state. Vanya touched on this earlier, but as many of you'll likely be aware, Victoria is Australia's largest food and beverage manufacturing state and generates over 47 billion dollars in revenue and employs more than 75,000 Victorians, but the sector is also one of the most emissions intensive, primarily due to that reliance on fossil gas for high temperature and continuous operations.
Given the importance of the food and beverage manufacturing sector to Victoria's economy and in recognition of the sectors reliance on fossil gas round three really aims to demonstrate the benefits of new and innovative technologies that can support both business competitiveness as well as the transition to zero and low emissions manufacturing.
This round will provide support to businesses to replace fossil gas powered equipment with electric alternatives, with the aim of accelerating industrial electrification by demonstrating the types of technologies and solutions that could be replicated and deployed at scale across the economy.
In doing so, the fund is really looking to support emissions reduction as well as stimulate private investment, sustainable growth and support jobs across regional and metropolitan Victoria.
I'm now going to pass across to Michelle Andrews from the team who will take you through the assessment and application process in more detail. Thanks Michelle.
[Speaker: Michelle Andrews]
Thank you, Emma. Hi everyone and nice to virtually see you all here today. As Emma mentioned, I'm going to run through the assessment and application process. Before I begin, I'll just note that all the required information about the application process is detailed in the application guidelines, which are available on the Energy Innovation Fund website.
As you will see, the application guidelines in order to be considered for funding, all applications must meet both the applicant and project eligibility criteria. The eligibility criteria are set out in section 4.1 of the guidelines specifically.
Applicants will need to meet a range of criteria, including legal and business status, financial and legal standing, compliance and conduct, and be willing to publicly share learnings and project outcomes.
Section 4.1.2 of the guidelines also sets out the project eligibility criteria. At a high level in order to be eligible, projects will need to support electrification of the food and beverage manufacturing sector.
Take place primarily in Victoria, comply with regulatory requirements, as well as demonstrate a contribution to emissions reduction and meet technical and commercial readiness requirements. Further detail on the eligibility criteria, including definitions of the technical and commercial readiness are outlined in the application guidelines
We do strongly encourage applicants to review the guidelines including these eligibility criteria closely, as only eligible projects will progress to the merit criteria assessment, which I'll run through in the next slide.
I'll now run you through how applications will be assessed. Projects will be assessed against the six merit criteria you can see on the screen. These are also set out in detail in section 6.2 of the application guidelines. All eligible applicants will be assessed against the six merit criteria.
These criteria have been designed to allow the projects that best meet the funds, objectives and priorities to be successful. The application form, which will be accessible when applications open this coming Monday the 29th of September, will request applicants to address specific questions associated with the merit criteria.
The application form will also provide further guidance on the types of things applicants may wish to consider when addressing each of the merit criteria. We would encourage you to review the application form early on in the process of developing your application and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the Energy Innovation Fund team.
Now I'll run through how much funding is available and what will qualify.
Round 3 is being delivered as a competitive grant process as we have already discussed, all applicants will be required to submit an application which demonstrates how the proposed project addresses the merit criteria.
Up to $10 million in grant funding is available for round three and a maximum grant amount of up to $2 million is available per application. However, DEECA retains discretion to consider applications which exceed this CAP with up to an additional $1 million available for projects that can demonstrate exceptional merit.
Funding is intended to support activities that directly relate to the delivery of the physical project and associated capital works. This means that the eligible activities must contribute to construction, commissioning or physical implementation of the project.
The Energy Innovation Fund will fund up to 50% of eligible project expenditure, meaning costs directly related to the project and the eligible activities. The remaining eligible costs need to be covered by other funding sources, including a mandatory contribution from the applicant.
Again, further detail on what can be funded is detailed in Section 5 of the application guidelines.
Now this slide I'll run through the application process and the timing.
As you are aware, round three was announced on the 25th of June 2025 and application guidelines were released on Monday the 22nd of September. Applications will open this coming Monday the 29th of September and will close at 1:00 PM Friday the 28th of November.
As I mentioned earlier, once applications open, you'll be able to access a link via the Energy Innovation Fund website to the online application form. Applicants will need to complete the application form which will set out a series of questions that relate to the eligibility and merit criteria.
As discussed earlier, the application form will also provide additional guidance to applicants on the types of information that you may wish to consider, including in your responses. In addition to the application form, you'll also be requested to complete and submit a number of supporting documents with your application.
Templates for the supporting documents will be able to be downloaded from the Energy Innovation Fund website once applications open on Monday. If there are questions within these documents, you are unable to answer, please just indicate N/A or if you require further clarification or guidance, please don't hesitate to contact us directly.
All successful applicants will need to enter into a funding agreement with the Victorian Government. The funding agreement establishes the parties and outlines their commitments and obligations to each other, as well as setting out the general funding terms and conditions.
A copy of the funding agreement will also be available on the EIF website when applications open. We would encourage you to review the terms and conditions of the funding agreement before applying. We note the funding agreement is a standard template and there is very little room to adjust the terms and conditions.
In saying this, any proposed departures will also need to be submitted with your application using the funding agreement departures template. That will also be provided at the time applications open.
As we've mentioned, we're available to assist if there are questions as you make your way throughout the application process. However, it is important to note that these questions need to be submitted to the EIF inbox by Friday the 21st of November. As I mentioned earlier, applications will close at 1:00 PM Friday the 28th of November.
I'll now pass to Emma, who will take you through an overview of the process once applications close.
[Speaker: Emma Dunne]
Great. Thanks, Michelle. So as Michelle's covered applications for round three will close on the 28th of November. After this, the department will then commence its evaluation process. As we've already covered today, the first stage of the process will be an eligibility followed by a merit assessment.
This phase of the process runs between November 2025 and February next year. In the second stage, the shortlisted applicants will proceed to a due diligence stage, with the successful applications then moving into funding agreement negotiations with the department.
There are further details on the due diligence process and what's involved in this in Section 7 of the guidelines. Should the department and the applicant successfully conclude negotiations and subject to the relevant approvals, funding agreements will then be executed.
In terms of timing, we are anticipating that funding agreement negotiations will conclude by June of next year, but note that this may be subject to change. And finally, again, subject to the necessary approvals, we're expecting that successful projects would then be announced from July of next year
In terms of next steps for applicants, as we've already outlined, you can find all of the relevant information for this funding round on the Energy Innovation Fund website, which is shown on screen, and this includes application guidelines and the frequently asked questions documents.
And from Monday, when applications open, you'll also be able to access links to the application form and the supporting documents that Michelle took you through earlier.
As we've mentioned, the EIF team is also available to assist with any questions. Just please submit your questions via the e-mail address on the screen and we will do our best to get back to you as quickly as possible.
There's also assistance available if you experience any technical issues with the online application form itself and our grants team is available online at the second e-mail address there if you run into trouble. We're also available to assist if any issues are encountered along the way.
I'm now going to pass over to Chris Iape, who's going to, as Vanya mentioned, provide an overview of some of the existing support available through the Victorian Energy upgrade program and some of the work that Solar Victoria has been doing in the industrial electrification space which we think might be of interest to many of you on the call today. Thanks Chris.
[Speaker: Chris Iape]
Thanks Emma. As I mentioned, my name is Chris and I look after the commercial industrial activities for Victorian energy upgrades. I guess the reason for being here today is there are two sort of key reasons, we've got some electrification case studies that we've done previously, which I think supports some of the underlying evidence and provides you with a bit of information that will definitely be helpful for some of these grant applications.
Secondly one is to sort of draw your attention to project based activities which is an activity type through the VEU which can provide you with sort of alternatively for complementary funding. Next slide please.
So just a quick overview on Victorian Energy Upgrades, there's a lot of activities that can occur under the VEU program. Effectively it's a government program that's voluntary and it provides incentives for individuals, households and businesses to access incentives to cut energy use and reduce their emissions.
The primary focus of this presentation will be on the business activities because it's more relevant to this group. But just keep in mind that there are residential offerings as well. Next slide please.
One of the sorts of activities or program we delivered under VEU was the large energy user Electrification support program. This was a bit more of a different program from the EIF in that it was looking more towards the start of a project looking at feasibility and identifying how business could electrify, and this happened about a year ago.
The funding was quite small. It was $1.56 million and aimed at sort of larger gas users. So 10 to 100 terajoules types of technologies that were included under this feasibility assessment were HVAC, low heat boilers, medium heat boilers and process and equipment like furnaces and ovens and so forth.
The main objective of this was to support some of the underlying evidence around electrification, particularly for those harder to reach large energy users. I think some of the case study outcomes would be quite valuable for some of our stakeholders in this meeting today.
So just an overview of what the program achieved, it's a feasibility study. So these numbers are all sort of projected, but the big headline figure is it can displace potentially up to 623 terajoules of gas usage per year just based on those 36 businesses that evaluated their sites and looked at opportunities.
Those opportunities are starting to become right, particularly as the technology matures. The other component of this program was to also look at how this could be potentially supported under initiatives such as the EIF and potentially the VEU program as well under project based activities. Next slide.
This is just a quick slide of all the businesses here. I won't go through them all, but I think it's suffice to say that there was a broad coverage of the different sector types and certainly it was very interesting looking at the different types of challenges that each of these sites had, obviously food and fibre is a different sort of sector with its own challenges and some of those businesses fit into that category as well, so worthwhile looking at those case studies as they're published on our website. Next slide.
Here's a quick cross section of some of the case studies, and I think the key sort of information that I'm trying to convey in this slide is the estimated value of incentives available through the VEU program. So one of the requirements of the grants was to highlight and calculate, if these projects were to pursue a project based activities under VEU.
What would that look like and what will the value of incentives be so you can see there's quite a range there. It depends on the type of technology and what your level of displacement for. For onsite gas use is, but potentially you've got some small applications which are attracting about a $45,000 incentive through VEU up to something like $1,000,000 plus and certainly we've seen projects exceed that as well.
This is a highlighted case study. So Ball Australia is a business that undertook the case study and acts as a grant. So just highlighting some of those headline figures there, there certainly is a business case if you start to couple that with some incentives to the EIF for example that business case starts to get a bit better, but we're really we're starting to see that initiative or electrification initiatives start to make sense from a from a dollars perspective, but also within the case study of some of the highlighted issues and barriers like distribution upgrades and substations, metering and so forth, things that pertain to the specific business.
So once again, a challenge you guys to have a look at those cases and read through those next slide.
I've spoken a lot about VEU PBAS and I appreciate not everyone is across what a project based activity is, so a quick description of project based activities is it's an incentive program or extensive activity under VEU that measures the before and after energy savings of a business.
And then IT projects those savings for 10 years and the business is able to access those incentives upfront, some of the headline figures around VUPBAS, it's reached a million tonnes of CO2 recently, which is a huge milestone.
There's 16 accredited providers, there's certainly a lot of businesses there that can support you through the approach. A lot of that service relates to the trading of certificates and getting the value out of that, but also around the statistical methods required to sort of demonstrate the savings there as well.
We've got a list of accredited providers on our website that you can sort of sift through and sort of work with to access some of these incentives, but certainly I think the message here today is that PBA’s there are incentive mechanism that exists. There's no time frame for that you consider apply tomorrow in six months time. Once your projects ready and it is a complementary measure to the EIF as well. So additional funding support for some of those projects.
That concludes my presentation today. I've left a couple of links on the page there. If you've got any specific questions, the e-mail address is senergy.upgrades@deeca.vic.gov.au and there's a couple of other references to case studies that I mentioned as well as some of the project based activities as well.
That's it for me and I'll pass you back to Emma.
[Speaker: Emma Dunne]
Thanks, Chris. That brings us really to the end of the session today. We would like to thank you all for attending and we hope that you found the session useful. In closing, I'll just reiterate that all of the detailed information about the Energy Innovation Fund round three can be found in the application guidelines that are linked on the website on the screen. Now we would really encourage you to review these closely and also the further guidance that will be available via the online application form.
Of course, we know that there'll be questions that come up as you're preparing your application, so please don't hesitate to get in touch with the team via the e-mail address provided, as we mentioned earlier, the slides from today and also a recording of the session will also be uploaded to the website shortly.
We'll also endeavour to respond to any questions raised following today's session as quickly as possible and these will be captured also in the updated FAQ document, which will also be updated uploaded to the website and we'll continue to update that document throughout the application open period as new questions are raised.
So please, keep an eye on this as you are preparing your applications. Thank you again for attending the briefing. We really look forward to hearing from you in due course. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.
Page last updated: 29/09/25