Each year, Australian corporations that meet certain thresholds must report their emissions and energy information under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting scheme. This captures about 60 per cent of Australia’s total emissions and 80 percent of energy consumed.
Electricity production and emissions intensity of electricity generators
Seventeen of Australia’s 20 largest electricity generators are coal fired power stations, with one hydro generator and the other two powered by gas.
Four of the 17 power stations use brown coal, which produces more emissions per megawatt hour of electricity produced than other forms of generation.
Emissions intensity is a way of measuring the amount of emissions from each unit of electricity produced. This graph shows reported electricity production in the columns above and emissions intensity (represented as the grey line above) for Australia’s largest 20 electricity generators.