Each year, Australian corporations that meet certain thresholds must report their emissions and energy information under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting scheme. This covers about 60 per cent of Australia’s total emissions.
While the electricity sector remained the largest emitting industry in Australia (48.8 per cent), 2018-19 was the first year that emissions from this sector were less than 50 per cent of all reported scope 1 emissions.
This graph shows reported electricity production, emissions intensity and fuel type for the largest 20 electricity generators in 2018–19.
Electricity production and emissions intensity of electricity generators
The ratio of emissions to electricity generation (known as emissions intensity) depends largely on the fuel source, with brown coal producing more emissions per unit of electricity than other fuel types. Emissions intensity is a way of measuring the amount of emissions from each unit of electricity produced.