Page 281 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 December 2016
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This latest inventory includes the methodology approved for 2015. It is based on international best practice through adherence to the 2006 IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories. The inventory is also consistent with the internationally recognised global protocol for community-scale greenhouse gas emission inventories released in 2014. The methodology was revised in July 2016 with technical amendments for waste and industrial emission calculations
Before I present the results of this year’s inventory, I would like to note an important change. This inventory takes into consideration changes made in the national greenhouse and energy reporting system run by the commonwealth in the calculations and reported emissions from the land use, land use change and forestry sector. Improvements were made in May 2016 to the scale of satellite imagery in carbon uptake modelling, known as FullCAM, used to determine the carbon uptake of vegetation.
When these improvements were applied to the data for the ACT, our net sink of emissions or carbon uptake from the land sector had changed considerably across all years, including our 1990 base year. In the greenhouse gas inventory I present today, the 1990 base year emissions have been recalculated, incorporating the commonwealth’s changes to ensure consistency in comparison across all years.
This change has a minor impact on 1990 levels, increasing the base year by just over 11 kilotonnes of carbon emissions. However, it has a notable impact on the 2014-15 inventory. Land sector emissions have changed from a net sink of minus 69.8 to just minus 7.9 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents. The figures present in the last year’s inventory, including those from 2012 to 2015, have been revised upwards accordingly. All numbers presented here today reflect or refer to the new historic figures as calculated in this year’s report.
I am pleased to inform the Assembly that this year greenhouse gas emissions in the territory have stabilised. This shows a decoupling of our emissions from both population and economic growth. The current greenhouse gas inventory estimates emissions from the territory in the 2015-16 reporting period as 4,016 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, including emissions reductions from land use, land use change and forestry. This is less than 0.5 per cent above emissions from the 2014-15 reporting period. It is also less than two per cent above 2012 levels.
Additionally, per capita emissions fell from 10.31 to 10.22 tonnes per person. This reinforces the continual achievement of the legislated target of peaking per capita emissions by June 2013, which was at 10.45 tonnes. Importantly, we are now well below our per capita emissions from 1990 levels, which peaked at 11.45 tonnes of carbon emissions.
The defining achievement in this stabilisation of emissions comes from our renewable energy policy. Renewable electricity generation grew from 18.8 to 21 per cent. This year, electricity emissions fell one per cent, despite almost a one per cent increase in through-the-meter supply to consumers.
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