Simply Energy and Billcap Abatement Project (Revoked)

Simply Energy and Billcap Abatement Project (Revoked) was an energy efficiency project administratively located in Richmond, approximately 3km southeast of the Melbourne CBD in Victoria. Registered in August 2015 and voluntarily revoked in March 2018, the project was managed by Billcap Pty Ltd. As an "aggregated small energy users" project, the physical coordinates refer to the proponent's operational base within an urban commercial zone, rather than a rural agricultural property.

The project operated under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Aggregated Small Energy Users) Methodology Determination 2015. This methodology focuses on reducing energy consumption in households and small businesses through behaviour change interventions. Proponents, typically energy retailers or software providers, create a "treatment group" that receives energy-saving information or tools (such as Billcap's engagement platform) and compare their usage against a "control group." The difference in energy consumption generates the abatement which can be credited as ACCUs.

While the project's activities took place in distributed households, the registered location in the Melbourne region experiences a temperate climate with variable rainfall, typically averaging around 600mm annually. The region lies on the Victorian Volcanic Plain, characterized by heavy basaltic clays and quaternary volcanic soils. However, as a non-sequestration project, these environmental factors did not directly influence the project's success compared to the efficacy of the software intervention.

An interesting aspect of this project was its partnership model; Billcap provided the SaaS (Software as a Service) customer engagement technology, while Simply Energy (backed by ENGIE) served as the energy retailer. The project was revoked under Section 30 of the CFI Rule, which indicates a voluntary revocation by the proponent. This method is notoriously complex due to the rigorous statistical requirements needed to prove that the behaviour change, rather than other variables, caused the energy reduction.