NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

The Client

The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) is the Australian state government agency responsible for energy policy, environmental protection, and climate action in New South Wales. The Department develops and administers programs designed to increase energy efficiency, reduce household and business energy costs, and support the state's transition to lower-emission energy use.

The Situation

The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water had developed sophisticated energy rebate policy and large-scale modeling data, but no structured way to put it in front of the people who needed it. Residents and businesses seeking guidance on government energy programs were navigating fragmented, static information with no personalized pathways to eligibility or savings estimates. 

The Department needed to turn that complexity into accessible, self-service digital tools that could increase awareness and uptake of its energy programs, reduce household energy costs, and accelerate the state's transition toward lower-emission energy use — all ready for a ministerial launch in approximately three months.

The Challenge

The Department's policy rules were highly conditional, its modeling dataset enormous, and its requirements strict. Translating that into a performant public-facing experience meant engineering a bespoke rules engine for deeply nested eligibility logic, a real-time calculation service capable of querying millions of modeled scenarios without performance bottlenecks, and more than 40 custom API endpoints to support a decoupled architecture. 

The platform also had to meet government standards for accessibility, security, and privacy — with no collection of personally identifiable information — and be flexible enough for policy teams to update rules and criteria themselves, without developer involvement.

The Solution

Acquia partner Sitback Solutions led end-to-end delivery of two integrated tools — the Energy Savings Finder and the Energy Savings Calculator — built on a headless Drupal architecture and deployed on Acquia Cloud. DCCEEW’s policy, modeling, communications, and digital teams provided the modeling and policy expertise that Sitback used to shape the project’s modeling data.

Delivery began with a structured planning phase in which Sitback formalized technical documentation, defined user stories and acceptance criteria, and created detailed test cases to validate business logic before the build commenced. The team initialized Drupal using the ‘Rapid Start’ framework as the base, a foundational Drupal website accelerator built and maintained by the NSW Government. 

Drupal served as the authoritative logic and content engine. Sitback built a unified custom module powering both tools, with custom content types for programs, upgrade paths, questions, and climate zones; a bespoke eligibility rules engine; postcode-to-climate-zone mapping; token-based result storage; and JSON API endpoints to serve dynamic survey data. A decoupled React front end delivered a fast, app-like multi-step survey experience with real-time conditional branching, dynamic savings recalculation, and alignment with the NSW Digital Design System. More than 40 custom API endpoints enabled seamless communication between the two layers.

At the heart of the Calculator was a savings-calculation service engineered to dynamically recalculate results across upgrade combinations drawn from the Department's modeling dataset — returning personalized estimates rather than static averages and supporting distinct user journeys for households, renters, and businesses.

The full solution underwent build verification, functional and accessibility testing, user acceptance testing with Department stakeholders, and government security and penetration testing before launch.

The Results

The Energy Savings Finder and Calculator launched in time for the ministerial deadline. As a recently launched platform, real-world user data is not yet available — but the project delivered against every delivery, technical, and operational objective set at the outset.

Both tools shipped within approximately three months. The platform operationalizes modeling derived from more than 1.8 million energy scenarios, supports distinct user journeys for households, renters, and businesses, and returns dynamic savings estimates in real time rather than static averages. No personally identifiable information is collected or stored — token-based results storage allows users to retrieve their results without creating an account, preserving both privacy and usability.

Additionally, policy teams can update eligibility rules, questions, and rebate criteria without developer involvement, reducing maintenance overhead and enabling rapid response to policy changes. The project established enterprise-grade digital infrastructure on Acquia Cloud capable of supporting population-scale service delivery and evolving alongside NSW Government energy programs for years to come.