Renewable Gas Production Program
Grants for Australian companies building or expanding NSW biomethane plants that supply gas to industrial facilities through the state’s gas network.
This programme supports commercially mature plants that turn organic material into biomethane, a substitute for fossil natural gas. It funds NSW feedstock infrastructure, gas production and upgrading, and the equipment needed to inject gas into the NSW network. Final engineering design, procurement, construction and commissioning can form part of the project.
Applications are closed. The documented round offered up to 50% of eligible costs, normally up to A$20 million per project. The guidelines allow above-limit awards in exceptional circumstances for applications with outstanding merit. You must cover at least the remaining 50%; contributions can come from your organisation, Commonwealth funding or partners unaffiliated with the NSW Government. Higher contributions are preferred, and obligations attached to other funding must align with this grant.
Eligible costs include installed plant, construction-equipment hire and running costs, paid project labour, directly related consultants, administration, legal and accounting costs, technology licences and knowledge sharing. Costs include GST only after subtracting credits you can claim. In-kind contributions cannot count. Shared resources must be charged in proportion to project use; related-party transactions must be at cost unless justified as being on commercial terms between independent parties.
The grant excludes expenditure before the funding deed is signed, land purchases, loan interest, application preparation, government-approval costs and NSW planning-assessment studies or fees. It also excludes normal business overheads, opportunity costs, work a government agency is responsible for, and sales, promotional or other expenditure that does not directly support completion. Paid labour needs evidence of time spent on the project. Contracted work needs a written contract before it starts.
Payment requires an executed funding deed, and the recipient must control the facility. The Department may require security such as a parent-company guarantee. Milestone numbers, percentages and timing are confirmed before signing; the published four-payment schedule is indicative. Payments depend on satisfactory progress and verified eligible expenditure. Full certification registration and commercial supply-chain contracts are payment conditions; the indicative schedule places them at milestone 2, with each milestone’s final requirements confirmed in the deed.
Keep separate, accurate accounts of project contributions and costs and an audit trail available on request. Provide the deed’s data and financial reports; the Department can inspect the site, recheck claims and request an independent audit. You must report credits and certificates generated, and the deed may require repayment of a share of revenue from their sale or transfer. Include all certificate revenues in the project financial analysis.
Applications must name an internationally recognised framework for measuring and reporting project emissions, such as ISO 14064-2 or the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. A qualified professional must undertake or independently review monitoring and verification. A knowledge-sharing plan must state what you will share, with whom, how, when and for how long, and its benefit to other facilities; recipients must complete the activities and reporting, including additional activities requested by the Department.
Keep a conditional offer confidential until both parties sign the deed, and obtain Department approval before public communications about the project. Approved public statements must acknowledge NSW Government support. Certification compliance continues after registration: notify GreenPower of material breaches within 14 days of becoming aware of them and give written notice of material changes, including feedstock, water or electricity arrangements. Changes that remove eligibility can result in accreditation withdrawal.
Eligibility
- The applicant needs an ABN and must be an Australian entity incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001, with the necessary business authorisations. International organisations can qualify through an Australian incorporated entity. You must own or control the biomethane plant, or plan to do so. Joint applications are allowed, but the lead must meet all criteria and takes responsibility for the grant and deed.
- Use feedstock procured in NSW to produce at least 0.1 petajoules of biomethane per year in NSW. The plant must be operational and inject gas into the NSW network by 30 June 2030. All produced biomethane must supply one or more NSW manufacturing or mining facilities reporting under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) scheme, replacing fossil fuel use. Residential and commercial gas customers are excluded.
- By full application, provide intended supply-chain agreements with NSW feedstock suppliers, gas-network operators and industrial buyers, including indicative price, volume and timing, and a GreenPower letter supporting certification participation. Preliminary agreements or formal contracts are needed before the deed; commercial contracts and full certification registration are payment conditions, shown at milestone 2 in the indicative schedule. The deed confirms the final milestone requirements. Certification enables Renewable Gas Guarantee of Origin certificates to be created and sold for the biomethane.
- Show technical and commercial feasibility by full application. Appendix C requires class-4 cost estimates with a −30% to +50% accuracy range, 1–15% engineering data, a known site and a schedule identifying start-up and design/construction time. Design basis, flow diagrams, preliminary equipment and power lists, site layout and hazard identification should be prepared. The first-payment class-3 assessment requires ±15% cost accuracy, quantitative cost-risk analysis, typically 30–40% engineering data, detailed engineering deliverables, design and hazard review, site investigations and a master schedule.
- Show that NSW co-funding makes an investment decision viable, significantly accelerates implementation or increases production and industrial emissions reduction. Early-stage studies, pilots, standalone works without network injection, solely on-site gas use and non-industrial end uses are excluded. Demonstrate the pathway, timing and risks for planning and environmental approvals at application stage; those approvals need not already be granted then.
- Comply with GreenPower’s Renewable Gas Certification rules. Its fit-and-proper assessment requires declarations about convictions, insolvency and the capability to operate the project. Feedstocks must meet the renewable-source rules: examples include agricultural and food waste, biomass-based sewage and landfill gas. Fossil fuels and fossil-derived waste are excluded; other non-fossil feedstocks and mixed industrial, commercial or municipal waste need case-by-case assessment.
- Prohibited feedstocks include material from forests other than sustainably harvested plantations; material from plantations established on old-growth or native forest cleared after 1 January 1990; energy crops on land cleared of those forests after that date; and fossil-derived fuels. Crops grown exclusively for energy may normally form no more than 10% of wet feedstock mass per reporting period, and must be necessary for supply certainty or consistency. GreenPower can consider exemptions for soil-improving cover crops that are not marketable food crops, or crops on land with constrained agricultural productivity or market access, where net environmental and social benefits are demonstrated.
- All electricity used to produce the gas must be evidenced as renewable for each reporting period, through on-site renewable generation under your operational control, grid electricity matched with GreenPower large-scale generation certificates, or both. Any certificates created for on-site electricity must be retired. The required grid-certificate quantity follows the rules’ formula, including the applicable statutory renewable-power percentages. Other energy sources may be used but must enter the production-emissions calculation; GreenPower can refuse accreditation where those emissions are disproportionate.
- GreenPower assesses responsible water use case by case. Gas must have lower emissions than fossil natural gas under the National Greenhouse Accounts Factors current at application. The project must meet ecologically sustainable development principles and provide a net environmental benefit, address community and Aboriginal community impacts through appropriate consultation, mitigation and benefit sharing, and obtain the necessary planning, environmental and safety permissions.
- Hold legally required insurance, including public liability and workers compensation; comply materially with employment and workplace-safety obligations. You must not be subject to an insolvency event or be on the sanctions list. The insolvency exclusion does not cover winding up or dissolution for reconstruction or amalgamation (reorganising or merging the company). Disclose relevant proceedings and investigations, all successful and unsuccessful Australian public-grant applications for the project, and respond to further information requests. Own or have rights to use and license the necessary intellectual property.
How to apply
- Status
- closed
- Opens
- Closes
- Round restrictions
- Applications are closed, including the invitation-only full application stage.[^c2]
- Only successful expressions of interest could advance to full application.[^c33]
The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has closed this round. The expression-of-interest stage ran from 9 March to 24 April 2026, with a published 11:00pm closing time. A successful expression of interest was required for an invitation to full application; new applicants could not enter directly at that stage.
Applications used the Department’s grant-management portal. Invited applicants were given two months for a full application, subject to timetable changes. The full stage required substantially more evidence, a detailed eligible-cost budget and requested departures from the funding-deed template. Use the programme page and FAQ for official updates; this listing does not offer a new application route.