X
Being Australia's largest retailer of energy means that measuring and managing our greenhouse footprint is a significant part of our overall sustainability strategy and reporting.
In the energy industry, to get an accurate picture of a company’s greenhouse performance it is not enough to look solely at the total amount of greenhouse gas emitted from the company’s operations. It is equally important to examine the greenhouse intensity of the assets managed and invested in by the company, and how the company’s business strategy will contribute to the overall greenhouse intensity of Australia’s economy into the future
At AGL, we use three approaches or ‘footprints’ to measure and explain the annual greenhouse gas impact of our operations, our equity interests and the energy we supply to customers.
The above data shows the total annual greenhouse gas emissions for AGL for 2006/07 includes those activities of The Australian Gas Light Company that formed part of the ongoing operations of AGL from 1 July 2006 to 25 October 2006.
The numbers presented in our Operational Footprint represent Scope 1 and 2 emissions only. Scope 3 emissions for the period are presented separately in the report. This change in the way we present our greenhouse gas emissions relates to new regulatory requirements for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and is discussed later in the report.
For details of AGL’s reporting boundary and calculation methodology see Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Criteria.
Essentially, we treat all assets over which we have operational control as our Operational Footprint. This includes assets where AGL employees have control of the operating policies such as health, safety and environment at the site. In some cases, this includes wind farms such as Wattle Point and Hallett (Stage 1), where AGL does not actually own the asset, but operates it. This does not include assets such as Yabulu where AGL does not operate the asset, notwithstanding it has full despatch rights to its output.
Over 2008/09, our Operational Footprint has decreased from 2.030 Mt CO2e to 1.677 Mt CO2e as a result of a lower amount of generation required in 2008/09 from our Torrens Island Power Station (TIPS). Absolute greenhouse gas emissions from AGL’s other operations remained relatively stable.
In September 2007, the Commonwealth Government introduced the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Act providing a methodology and framework for the disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and energy production for corporations across Australia. AGL is required to report under the NGER Act for reporting periods from the 2008/09 financial year. This has meant that we have changed some of the ways we calculate and report greenhouse gas and energy data in this report to align with the reporting requirements of the NGER Act.
We also measure our Equity Footprint. The Equity Footprint sets out AGL’s share (by percentage investment level) of the emissions from our fully or partially owned entities. The Equity Footprint indicates to AGL Shareholders the greenhouse gas impacts associated with their investment.
During the reporting period there have been changes to AGL’s overall Equity Footprint. A minor increase in our Australian Equity Footprint is due to increased greenhouse gas emissions from Loy Yang Power during the period. We also saw our Overseas Equity Footprint reduce over the period due to the sale of our upstream gas investments in Papua New Guinea.
The third footprint that we measure is AGL’s Energy Supply Footprint. This covers greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the production, transportation, distribution and consumption of electricity and gas throughout the energy supply chain. Emissions resulting from the supply of energy to our customers was slightly reduced compared with 2007/08 emissions.
AGL estimates that the overall greenhouse gas intensity of our owned and/or controlled electricity generation (including AGL’s equity in Loy Yang Power) has remained relatively stable from 0.85 tCO2e/MWh in 2007/08 to 0.86 tCO2e/MWh in 2008/09. Whilst there was a minor increase in generation from Loy Yang Power, this increase was largely offset by low emission and renewable generation sourced from across our owned/controlled generation portfolio.
