What is a facility
A facility is an
activity or series of activities that generate greenhouse gas emissions and produce or consume energy. Facilities:
The definition of a facility for the purposes of the NGER legislation is quite broad. The NGER Scheme is intended to cover a number of varied and complex situations. It is designed to provide corporations with a degree of flexibility in applying the definition of a facility to their own specific circumstances.
For example, a facility under the NGER Act might be a factory as well as transportation of goods outside the factory's boundaries, but still associated with the factory's activities. Other examples of facilities include electricity generators, primary production and manufacturing plants, mining, landfill and construction sites, retail outlets, air, rail, road and water transport, and electricity, gas or water supply.
For more information on defining a facility under the NGER Scheme see the
Guide on Defining Facilities (PDF).
Operational control
A person will have
operational control over a facility if they have the authority to introduce and implement any or all of the following for the facility:
- operating policies
- health and safety policies
- environmental policies, or
Where
more than one corporation has the authority to introduce and implement any or all of these policies, the corporation that has the
greatest authority to introduce and implement operating policies and environmental policies has operational control over the facility.
Where
no one corporation has the greatest authority to introduce and implement these policies, a corporation can be nominated as having operational control over the facility. This occurs by filling in the
Application for declaration of facility form.
The Clean Energy Regulator can also declare a person as having operational control over a facility.
Change in operational control
There are also situations where there may be
change in operational control, for example where a facility is sold part way through the year. In these circumstances each controlling corporation would report on the facility for the part of the year the facility was under the operational control of the controlling corporation or its group member. Note part year reporting does not apply where ownership of the controlling corporation or group member changes but operational control of a facility does not.
What next?
Calculate greenhouse gas emissions and energy production and consumption and determine whether the facility meets either the facility or corporate group
thresholds.
If you have determined that you have an obligation to report under the NGER Scheme you must
register your controlling corporation.