Export Emissions Methodology
27 August 2019 | Data Methodology
Sources
The Australian fossil fuel export data come from the Department of Environment and Energy1 (DEE), the Office of the Chief Economist2 (OCE) and the International Energy Association3 (IEA). The DEE publishes data for each financial year on the total export of all Australian coal, gas, liquid natural gas and oil. The DEE also provides the total Australian export of hard, black, coking and thermal coal. The OCE publishes quarterly data for the total export and destinations of Australian hard, thermal and coking coal. The IEA publishes the total export and destinations of all Australian gas, and liquid natural gas. Data on the fossil fuel exports from non-Australia countries is obtained from the OECDiLibrary.
Calculation of fossil fuel export emissions
Data from various sources is either displayed directly or is used to calculate the emissions associated with the combustion of the fossil fuel. The standard physical units are Million tonnes (Mt), the standard energy units are Petajoules (PJ) and standard emission units are GtCO2-e (Gt of CO2 equivalent emission). Depending on the unit used in the fossil fuel data, an emission factor and a calorific value – if needed – are used to calculate the emissions. The DEE data are first converted from financial years (from July to June) into calendar years by estimating that the data for a given calendar year is equivalent to the data of the financial year starting on July of that year.
Exports
Table 1. List of Australian export data with their sources, units and type of conversion applied from the source to the database.
| Data type | Data Sub-type | Division | Units | Source | Source acronym | Operation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coal | All | Total for Australia only | kt | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table N | DEE | Coking Coal + Thermal Coal Conversion from financial year to calendar year |
| Black Coal | Total for Australia only | PJ | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table J | DEE | Direct input converted from financial year to calendar year | |
| Coking Coal | Total for Australia only | kt | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table N | DEE | Direct input converted from financial year to calendar year | |
| Coking Coal | By country of export | Mt | Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (2019), Office of the Chief Economist, Resources and Energy Quarterly – June 2019 | OCE | Sum the quarterly data for each year and for “high quality” and “other” metallurgical coal | |
| Hard Coal | By country of export | Mt | Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (2019), Office of the Chief Economist, Resources and Energy Quarterly – June 2019 | OCE | Sum the quarterly data for each year and for “high quality”, “other” metallurgical coal and thermal coal | |
| Thermal Coal | Total for Australia only | kt | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table N | DEE | Direct input Conversion from financial year to calendar year | |
| Thermal Coal | By country of export | Mt | Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (2019), Office of the Chief Economist, Resources and Energy Quarterly – June 2019 | OCE | Sum the quarterly data for each year for thermal coal | |
| Gas | All Gas | By country of export | Mcm | Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development IEA Natural Gas Information Statistics, Natural gas imports by origin (2018) | OECD Gas | Direct input: Imports by origin, Natural gas (Million cubic metres) |
| All Gas | Total for Australia only | PJ | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table J | DEE | Direct input converted from financial year to calendar year | |
| All Gas | By country of export | TJ | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development IEA Natural Gas Information Statis-tics, Natural gas imports by origin (2018) | OECD Gas | Direct input: Imports by origin, Natural gas (Terajoules) | |
| Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) | Total for Australia only | kt | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table N | DEE | Direct input: LNG Conversion from financial year to calendar year | |
| Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) | By country of export | Mcm | Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development IEA Natural Gas Information Statis-tics, Natural gas imports by origin (2018) | OECD Gas | Direct input: Imports by origin, of which Liquified natural gas (Million cubic metres) | |
| Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) | By country of export | TJ | Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development IEA Natural Gas Information Statistics, Natural gas imports by origin (2018) | OECD Gas | Direct input: Im-ports by origin, of which Liquified natural gas (Terajoules) | |
| Oil | Oil | Total for Australia only | ML | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table N | DEE | Direct input: Crude oil and ORF Conversion from financial year to calendar year |
| Oil | Total for Australia only | PJ | Department of the Environment and Energy (2018), Australian Energy Statistics, Table J | DEE | Direct input: Crude oil and ORF Conversion from financial year to calendar year |
Conversions to emissions
All units are converted to standard units:
Coal: Mt
Oil: ML
Gas: Mcm
Energy: PJ
Emissions: GtCO2-e
When fuel data is available in energy units, those are converted directly to emission using the CO2 emission for combustion factor. If the data is not available in energy units, the volume or weight units are first converted using the net calorific value. The equivalence in CO2 emissions are calculated as follow:
Table. 2 Summary of the conversion factors used
| Fuel | Net Calorific value (TJ/Gg) | CO2 emission for combustion (kg/TJ) |
|---|---|---|
| Coking Coal | 28.2 | 94600 |
| Crude Oil | 42.3 | 73300 |
| Natural Gas Liquids | 44.2 | 64200 |
| Natural Gas | 48.0 | 56100 |
*The net calorific values and CO2 emission for combustion are as per IPCC (2006) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Tables 1.2 and 1.4.
Table. 3 Sources reference list
| Acronym | Full Name | Link |
|---|---|---|
| DEE | Department of Environment and Energy (2018) | https://www.energy.gov.au/publications/australian-energy-update-2018 |
| OCE | Office of the Chief Economist | https://publications.industry.gov.au/publications/ resourcesandenergyquarterlyjune2019/index.html |
| OECD Gas | Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development iLibrary (2018) | https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/energy/data/iea-natural-gas-information-statistics_naturgas-data-en doi: 10.1787/naturgas-data-en |
| IPCC | International Panel for Climate Change (2006) | https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html |
References
Department of Environment and Energy (2018). Australian Energy Statistics (Table J and Table N).
https://www.energy.gov.au/publications/australian-energy-update-2018
Office of the Chief Economist (2019). Quaterly – Historical Data June 2019
https://publications.industry.gov.au/publications/resourcesandenergyquarterlyjune2019/index.html
International Energy Association (2018). Natural gas imports by origin, doi: 10.1787/naturgas-data-en
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/energy/data/iea-natural-gas-information-statistics_naturgas-data-en
OECD
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/
