Aug 08, 2025
6 min read
🏭 Major Facility Data 2.0 Now Live - Compare Biggest Polluters with Their Peers
Hi, and welcome to your climate data briefing!
Today’s briefing partly explains my recent absence.👩🚀
Back in May, I shared the launch of Major Facilities data on OnlyFacts (catch up here if you missed it).
Now, version 2.0 is live. Woot! 🥳
The big improvement is you can drill into facilities and their corporate owners by industry.
That means you can compare performance among peers, and spot the best and worst performers within each group.
For a refresher on the Safeguard mechanism and major facility data, here's an explainer.
Otherwise, let’s dive in. 🤿
🤔 Part 1: Quick Data Primer
Q: How did we decide ‘peers’?
We grouped facilities and companies using ANZSIC (the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification). It sorts companies into four levels, from broad to specific:
- Division
- Subdivision
- Group
- Class
As you drill through division > subdivision > group > class, you’ll find smaller peer groups that draw closer and fairer comparisons.
Read more about how we've classified each facility and company here.
Q: What’s being compared?
Three key metrics: emissions, baselines, and credits.
- Gross emissions: the total greenhouse gases a facility emits.
- Baselines: the legal emissions cap (or limit) under the Safeguard Mechanism.
- Credits: carbon credits needed to reduce net emissions (i.e. emissions on paper) to comply with the baseline.
🤿 Part 2: Dive Into Examples
Quick note: When I refer to industries or sectors below, I’m really talking about the facilities within them that report under the Safeguard Mechanism. I.e. Those emitting at least 100,000 tonnes of CO₂-e per year. So when I say 'industry' etc., I don’t mean the entire sector across Australia - just the largest polluters within it.
🏭 Step 1: Start with the big picture (Division)
The first table on the Major Facility dashboard gives an overall view of how each industry compares.
It shows aggregate emissions, baselines, and carbon credit use for each division.
Take electricity, gas, water and waste. In FY 23-24, the division emitted 130.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO₂-e). That was well below its baseline of 200.9 Mt.*
This gives the electricity sector a generous buffer before it needs to start paying for carbon credits.
Mining tells a different story. It released 88.2 Mt CO₂-e, overshooting its 86 Mt baseline by 2.2 million.
Overall, the mining industry used carbon credits to reduce its net (on paper) emissions by 7.7%.
To contextualise these numbers, if Australia’s electricity sector was a country, it would have the 43rd highest emissions in the world, just behind the total national emissions of 🇳🇱 Netherlands and 🇪🇹 Ethiopia.
If our biggest miners were a country, they would have the 56th highest emissions in the world, just behind total national emissions of 🇧🇪 Belgium and 🇨🇩Democratic Republic of the Congo.
🌎 Btw, you can track country emissions here and emissions by population here.
🏭 Step 2: Drill down into Subdivisions
Let’s go one step deeper into mining, which breaks down into four subdivisions:
Oil and gas emitted 43.2 Mt CO₂-e (roughly the same as national emissions in 🇸🇪 Sweden or 🇨🇺 Cuba). This was 1.2 million tonnes below the subdivision’s collective baseline.
This leaves Oil and Gas facilities with a comfortable amount of headroom before having to pay for carbon credits. In fact, they are earning credits for coming in under baseline.
Coal mining overshot its baseline, with 31.4 Mt CO₂-e (roughly the same as national emissions in 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka or 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Metal ore mining went 2.1 million tonnes over its baseline, emitting 13.4 Mt CO₂-e (roughly the same as 🇯🇲 Jamaica or 🇸🇻 El Salvador).
🏭 Step 3: Drill deeper into Groups and Classes
Let’s go a step further again, selecting metal ore mining.
The next level down is called a group. Logically, that should split metal ore mining into smaller groups. But in this case, the 'group' still refers to metal ore mining as a whole.
So we need to drill further into the level of class. Here, we find metal ore mining facilities sorted by what they extract:
Iron ore mining had the highest emissions (7.2 Mt CO₂-e) and overshot its baseline by the biggest margin in raw terms (1.7 million tonnes).
Nickel ore miners, with smaller emissions, were further off the aggregate baseline in percentage terms. This group of miners used carbon credits to reduce net (on paper) emissions by 21.4%.
🏭 Step 4: Drill into each class, to see the group of companies that are direct peers.
If we click into iron ore mining facilities, we find a list of emitters. The top 5 are:
Those names don't mean much to most of us. So let's look at the companies behind them.
Even these company names won't ring bells for most people. It's their parent companies that carry more meaning.
- Citic Pacific is owned by CITIC Limited, one of China’s largest conglomerates.
- Hamersley Iron is owned by Rio Tinto.
- FMG Solomon and Chichester Metals are owned by Fortescue Metals.
That's why we're now building an additional view that shows parent companies, corporate groups, and country of headquarters.
It’s another step toward real transparency on Australia’s biggest polluters, and how they’re performing on cutting emissions.
🤓 Also coming soon: search tools and new metrics to compare.
Blurbs
Worth Your Time
Back-pat for Australia. Saul Griffiths makes the case for rooftop solar to his American friends. ‘Australian energy and climate politics aren’t as ruinous as America’s because we have cheap rooftop solar,’ inter alia. The average price of rooftop solar is $0.66 (AUD) per watt in Australia and $4.18 (AUD) in the USA. ‘We’ll never solve climate change for moral reasons, but need to make the economics work, everywhere for everyone. That is a project of making electricity very very cheap.’ (Energy & Stuff)
Cleaner, Happier, More Productive
How the net zero transition could rally Australia’s elusive productivity growth. One idea relevant to this briefing: unfurl the Safeguard Mechanism to lasso more industrial facilities by dropping the emissions threshold from 100,000 to 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. Other ideas: a ‘strike team’ to crank up environmental approvals; big-picture assessments that consider how clean energy projects ultimately help the environment; prune state duplication and prune state duplication. (Productivity Commission)
Creative illustration of a seven-year saga to set up a community battery - told as a game of snakes and ladders. Win a planning exemption or discover a similar tender? Skip ahead a few squares. Hit an unhelpful network service provider? Slide down the snake. The biggest drop came after failure to secure insurance. To fix it, the community handed ownership of the battery to a retailer, triggering another council assessment. Then the retailer pulled out. Seven years and 1500 volunteer hours later, still no battery. (The Energy)
Headlines
What Happened This Week
Australia
A major review of the National Electricity Market (NEM) was published with a ‘radical plan’ to encourage new energy projects (AFR, 6 August)
Analysis of 124 reefs on the Great Barrier Reef showed coral cover has dropped after a record-breaking marine heatwave in 2024 (The Conversation, 6 August)
The biggest battery on Australia’s energy grid was brought online to help prevent power blackouts in NSW (The Guardian, 5 August)
Tasmania approved a second underwater electricity cable and transmission line connecting Victoria and Tasmania (ABC, 1 August)
Data showed households installed nearly 20,000 battery systems in the first month of the rebate (One Step Off the Grid, 1 August)
World
US federal agencies issued a barrage of restrictions on wind and solar power that exceeded the industries’ worst fears (Bloomberg, 7 August)
Wildfires in south France burned an area larger than Paris (BBC, 7 August)
Boeing and Airbus paused their green plane projects, casting doubt on 2050 climate goals (Airguide, 6 August)
UBS quit the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, joining a global exodus (Reuters, 7 August)
Data
Energy Updates at OnlyFacts
National Electricity Market (NEM)* this week vs. same week last year:
- Renewables: 38.4% (+6.0%)
- Fossils: 61.6%
Fuel breakdown:
- Coal (Black): 39.9% (-2.4%)
- Wind: 15.4% (+5.6%)
- Coal (Brown): 15.1% (-0.7%)
- Solar (Rooftop): 9.3% (+0.2%)
- Solar (Utility): 7.2% (+1.2%)
- Gas: 6.6% (-3.5%)
- Hydro: 6.2% (-1.4%)
South-West Interconnected System (SWIS)* this week vs. same week last year:
- Renewables: 33.0% (+2.7%)
- Fossils: 67.0%
Fuel breakdown:
- Coal (Black): 35.0% (+2.6%)
- Gas: 31.9% (-5.4%)
- Wind: 17.3% (+4.6%)
- Solar (Rooftop): 13.2% (-2.6%)
- Solar (Utility): 1.5% (+0.1%)
*NEM covers NSW, ACT, VIC, QLD, SA, TAS; SWIS covers south-west WA. Data source: Open Electricity.
💡Curious about NT energy? We've just added it here at OnlyFacts and will include it in future updates.
Final Thought
'Find what you love and let it kill you.'
- Charles Bukowski
That's your climate data briefing for this week! Wishing you a happy and safe weekend.
💛 Juliette and the OnlyFacts team
*Data note: If you're familiar with the Safeguard Mechanism, you’ll know the electricity sector has a collective baseline of 198 Mt CO₂-e. The 200.9 Mt figure includes that sector-wide limit, plus individual baselines from gas, water, and waste facilities.
