National Greenhouse Accounts Factors 2014

I know that everyone has been waiting for this following the Australian Federal Budget… The 2014 National Greenhouse Accounts Factors. It is one of those documents that generally people in the Energy industry do not read, even if they are relying on the information contained in it.

For instance, if you were an Electricity Retailer, and were telling your customers how much CO2 their electricity was generating, you should ensure that you use up to date figures, or you could be accused of being deceptive with the statements on the bills. Integral Energy at one stage was using CO2 figures for bills that were several years out of date.

I have included some information below from the report – this is a table showing the CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity produced and send to end user customers. For those who are unaware of how to read this, generally the third column is what should be used since it an amalgamation of the results for the entire production and distribution cycle.

There are few surprises in the numbers – most of the country with the exception of Victoria and Tasmania have emissions figures of about 1 Kg CO2/kWh, and are generally slowly decreasing. This is due to increased renewables generation, and also a move towards gas turbines instead of coal [although this is not necessarily a good thing].

Victoria and Tasmania are the interesting states on these numbers. Victoria is staying around 1.35 Kg CO2/kWh, which is a figure it has been for a few years. Tasmania has decreased from 0.34 to 0.23 Kg CO2/kWh. The figures for Tasmania are returning closer to their historical average of about 0.070 Kg CO2/kWh. Strangely, around the time of the 0.070 Kg reading, Victoria was about 1.43 Kg CO2/kWh. I will explain the reason in a future post.
All in all, CO2 emissions from electricity are decreasing per kWh, which is a good thing