​The Clean Energy Regulator today released the 2016–17 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting data.

Each year, Australian corporations that meet certain thresholds are required to report their emissions and energy information to the Clean Energy Regulator. This data helps inform government policy and programs and meet Australia’s international reporting obligations.

For the 2016–17 year, corporations reported a total of 336 million tonnes of scope 1  greenhouse gas emissions. This represents an overall increase in emissions of 1.8 million tonnes (0.5 per cent) on the previous year , which is the lowest year-on-year growth in emissions in the last three years. 

This result includes a 7.9 million tonne increase in reported scope 1 emissions from oil and gas extraction (mostly liquefied natural gas production), largely due to new and increased production in Western Australia and Queensland, including emissions attributable to the commissioning and start-up of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and domestic gas production from the Gorgon Project in Western Australia.​

This increase was offset by a 5 million tonne decrease in the electricity sector due to reduced production from brown coal and the closure of the Hazelwood power station, improved efficiency from some black coal generators, and increased production from renewables.  

The data also reports 86 million tonnes of scope 2 emissions and 3887 petajoules of net energy consumed.

Comparing published data between years

It is important to note that information published as part of the 2016–17 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting dataset cannot be directly compared to publications from previous years for a range of reasons, including updates made to totals to account for report resubmissions. The Clean Energy Regulator takes all reasonable efforts to ensure the information published on its website is accurate at the time of publication.

For more information, see the 2016–17 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting data highlights​.​