Parliament today passed legislation requiring larger greenhouse gas emitters to report their emissions and energy use from mid-2008 – but only after the government softened a provision that will allow it to override reporting requirements in state and territory laws.
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Bill 2007 requires companies triggering emissions or energy thresholds to report emissions and energy data.
The thresholds will be phased in over three years from 2008-09. From the third year, companies will be required to report if they annually emit more than 50,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases or produce or consume more than 200 terajoules of energy. The obligation is expected to capture about 700 companies.
The national reporting scheme will eventually replace a variety of reporting obligations under various schemes administered by the federal government and states and territories. Reporting will be managed through a system based on the federal Online System for Comprehensive Activity Reporting (OSCAR), developed for the Greenhouse Challenge Plus program. Corporations will be required to report emissions or energy use from facilities over which they have operational control.
Over-ride provisions softened
In its original form, clause five of the bill automatically overrode any state or territory greenhouse gas or energy reporting requirement. However, this provision was widely criticised in submissions to a Senate committee inquiry. The government accepted a recommendation of the inquiry and redrafted it so that only those state and territory reporting requirements specified in regulations will be overridden.
Government amendments to the bill while it was before parliament also clarified that the federal government is obliged to provide data to states and territories, providing data security conditions are met.
Milne slams lack of disclosure
Greens Senator Christine Milne criticised the bill for only providing public disclosure of emissions at the company level, rather than at the facility level. The government had “given in to the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network which desperately does not want public disclosure at a facility level,” Milne told parliament.
“We now have a bill in which, although the data will be collected at the facility level, there is no requirement to disclose that data to the public,” she said. “There are only aggregated totals across company levels and that is not going to give the public what it wants in terms of being able to hold companies to account. That is a mistake.”
The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Bill 2007, explanatory memoranda, proposed amendments and second reading speeches can be found here.
