Welcome to the August 2021 issue of the NEEA Report, and apologies for the long delay since the last issue.

Because it is nearly five months since our last issue, this new issue starts with an update in the NEEA estimate of changes in Australia’s total energy combustion emissions up to the end of June 2021. This is followed by a short section on recent trends in the emissions efficiency of new vehicles, using data contained in a recently published report by the National Transport commission.

The report then uses Australia’s most recent National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI), published at the start of May, to do a comparison and reconciliation between the NEEA annual estimates (which exclude some of Australia’s energy emissions) with the NGGI.

The report also adds a summary comparison of trends in official figures for Australia’s energy emissions, as calculated by successive national inventories, with corresponding trends for the EU, the UK the USA and Japan. The next section presents monthly data over the last four years, to see what effect, if any, the pandemic lockdowns have had on energy consumption.

The final section updates the progress made in displacing coal and gas fired generation in the NEM by wind and solar, up to the end of July 2021 and also includes graphs comparing shares of variable renewable generation in each state with average wholesale prices over the past few years. As usual, details on data sources and methods are included in the appendix.