The Powering the Regions Fund – Safeguard Transformation Stream Round 1 grant opportunity will provide up to $50 million to trade exposed facilities to reduce their emissions and contribute to meeting Australia’s emissions reduction targets.
This grant opportunity was announced in January 2023 as part of the Government’s Safeguard Mechanism Reforms to support the Government’s ambition for Australia to become a renewable energy superpower.
The Australian Government has announced a total of $600 million over the life of the program. For this first round of the Powering the Regions Fund - Safeguard Transformation Stream up to $300 million is available over 4 years.
The objectives of this grant opportunity are to:
support trade-exposed facilities covered by the Safeguard Mechanism to reduce their emissions and contribute to meeting Australia’s 2030 (and 2050) emissions reduction targets
reduce the risk of carbon leakage, which occurs when a business responds to emissions reduction policies by moving emissions-intensive production to a country with less stringent policies
provide skills development to existing industrial workforce in new equipment or processes that contribute to the reduction of scope 1 emissions.
Applications will be assessed in batches.
Batch 1: 9 August 2023 - 1 November 2023
Batch 2: 2 November 2023 - 1 May 2024
Batch 3: 2 May 2024 - 1 November 2024