Australia's emissions

Australia publishes comprehensive reports on greenhouse gas emissions in the National Greenhouse Accounts.

Australia publishes comprehensive reports on greenhouse gas emissions in the National Greenhouse Accounts. This data is used to meet Australia's reporting commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and track progress against Australia's target under the Kyoto Protocol as well as inform policy makers and the public.

The National Greenhouse Accounts

The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency publishes Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts, which outline Australia's greenhouse gas emissions as a nation, by state and by industry.

The National Greenhouse Accounts comprise the:

Search Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts online.
The Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System (AGEIS) provides emission results for 1990 to 2009.

The latest data

Change in National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: June quarter 2011
Emissions growth rate Amount (%)
Quarterly change - trend 0.5
Quarterly change - seasonally adjusted 0.8
Annual change through to June quarter -0.4

The National Inventory has increased in the June quarter with trend emissions rising by 0.5%. This growth is primarily attributed to an increase in emissions from stationary energy other than electricity generation, transport and fugitive emissions from coal mining.

The quarterly change in the national emissions growth rate from June 2005 to June 2011, in both trend and seasonally adjusted terms, is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: National Inventory, seasonally adjusted emissions growth rates, quarterly change.
 
Download data table for Figure 1 (XLS 523kB)

The lift in emissions in the June quarter follows a year of relatively weak emission levels. Emissions for the year to June 2011 were 0.4% lower than the previous year reflecting, in particular, a decrease in fugitive emissions from black coal mining and a change in generation sources for electricity.

“Over the year to the June quarter of 2011, Australia's National Inventory total was an estimated 546 Mt CO2-e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) (see Table 1). The National Inventory total does not include estimates of net credits from the article 3.3 Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) activities, which are estimated on an annual basis only.p>

Table 1: National Inventory: for the year to June quarter 2011
Category Emissions through to year ended (Mt CO2-e)a Change in annual emissionsb
2010 June quarter 2011 June quarter
National Inventory - Annex A sectors
Energy - Electricity 201 194 -3.4%
Energy - Stationary energy excluding electricity 90 94 4.1%
Energy - Transport 84 86 2.1%
Energy - Fugitive emissions 44 42 -4.0%
Industrial processes 31 33 3.9%
Waste 14 14 1.3%
Agriculture 83 83 -0.6%
National Inventory (excluding LULUCF) 548 546 -0.4%

  1. Values are estimates of annual emissions through to the June quarter.
  2. The percentage change is the annual growth rate for the June quarter (i.e. the increase in emissions for the June quarter over the corresponding period of the previous year). Percentage change reflects a higher degree of precision than is listed in the emissions estimates which are rounded to the nearest million tonnes.

Related information

What the rest of the world is doing

Other developed countries are also required to produce annual greenhouse gas inventories.