However, the agency (ARENA) has assured that the cut will not affect its funding for the current year nor the funding for projects that have already signed funding agreements.

Among these projects is Visy's waste-to-energy initiative. Last month, ARENA committed $2.1 million to the $4.2 million feasibility study that will investigate the use of municipal, commercial and industry waste otherwise destined for landfill to generate clean renewable electricity in Tumut, in the Riverina region of NSW and share the knowledge gleaned with the industry.

ARENA was set up to fund renewable energy projects and research and had a budget of $3 billion.

The Coalition had flagged a cut to ARENA's budget in its pre-election costings but did not disclose how big this would be.

The reduction is of top of a Labor government announcement in May that $370 million, which was meant to be allocated to ARENA over 2014-15 to 2016-17 would be deferred to 2019-20.

This means that ARENA will only have $200 million of uncommitted funds to distribute from now till 2016-17.

It does however, have a total funding envelope including committed and spent funds of $2.5 billion to manage till 2022.

The agency said that it is evaluating the impact the slash in funding will have on its existing programs and those projects in the pipeline but added that applications for funding through the Emerging Renewables Program, the Accelerated Step Change Initiative, the Community and Regional Renewable Energy Program and the Regional Australia’s Renewables – Industry Program are still being accepted.

ARENA currently manages 181 projects that account for about $960 million in committed funds. These include:

• $3.6 million for Renergi's Emerging Renewables Program that aims to construct and demonstrate an innovative biomass gasification technology that will convert biomass such as agricultural waste into clean gaseous fuel to be used to generate energy; and

• $1.33 million for Sugar Research Australia and CSIRO's second-generation Biofuels Research and Development Program that investigates the technical and commercial feasibility of producing biofuel from sugarcane waste.