The federal government’s Clean Energy Regulator (CER) comes clean on just who are Australia’s biggest polluters.
Towering above all other polluters is the New South Wales government-owned electricity generator Macquarie Generation, which has just failed in a bid to be taken over by fellow electricity generator AGL.
Had the two merged they would have had a combined output of carbon dioxide twice that of the next biggest polluter, also an electricity generator, Delta Electricity.
The figures come in National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting data for the 2012-13 year.
The CER said emissions and energy information for electricity generator facilities has been published as part of the 2012-13 NGER data publication.
CER said this information is intended to better inform the community on the performance of electricity generators and will play an important role in informing government and regulatory bodies, industry bodies and Australia’s energy markets.
The regulator said the release was a point-in-time publication that provides data reported by corporations that meet the NGER publishing threshold of 50 kilo-tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.
The publication includes the total scope one greenhouse gas emissions, total scope two greenhouse gas emissions and net energy consumption data reported for the 2012-13 financial year for these corporations.
The Clean Energy Regulator has also published the National Greenhouse and Energy Register for 2012-13.
This includes details of each organisation that was registered under the NGER Act for the 2012-13 reporting year.
As CER said it is important to note that information published under the NGER scheme does not identify the liability of an entity under the carbon pricing mechanism.
Emissions numbers reported by entities liable under the carbon pricing mechanism are available from the Liable Entities Public Information Database (LEPID).
The Clean Energy Regulator has also updated the LEPID to include information regarding liable entities’ emissions numbers, split according to the total attributable scope one emissions of greenhouse gas, and the total attributable potential greenhouse gas emissions embodied in an amount of natural gas.
