Sydney, 4 July – The Australian government today confirmed that it is planning to expand unverified, company-led emissions estimates across all large open cut coal mines, an accounting shift which could dramatically reduce reported coal mine emissions without any real reduction in emissions, according to Ember.
The shift confirmed today would seek to do away with emissions estimates regulated by state-led averages, and ask open cut coal miners to estimate their own emissions, without any external verification or review.
This second approach was previously a voluntary option available to open cut coal miners, which the Climate Change Authority recommended it be urgently reviewed due to the serious risks of selective sampling by coal miners.
In their review of methane emissions measurement last year, the Authority did not recommend the roll out of this method to replace the existing state averages, and in fact, recommended 7 other measurement changes and 5 transparency improvements that they believed were “urgently” needed to improve the integrity of Australia’s methane measurement.
An analysis from international energy think tank Ember released last month, assessed the history of self-led emissions reporting in the coal sector. The report found that companies that have opted to undertake self-led emissions estimates had reported emissions up to 130 times lower than state based averages would have otherwise advised.
The report also highlighted that mines that have undertaken the switch from state-led averages to self-led estimates, have consistently reported significant emissions reductions in the process, with some mines reducing their annual emissions by up to an over 1 million tonnes CO2-e.
