The NSW Government aims to achieve a 50% reduction in NSW emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 and to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The Net Zero Plan Stage 1: 2020-2030, released in March 2020, is the foundation for NSW Government’s action on climate change over the next decade.

The plan aims to strengthen the prosperity and quality of life for the people of NSW and has four key priorities.

Priority 1: Drive the uptake of proven emissions reduction technologies

Priority 2: Empower consumers and businesses to make sustainable choices

Priority 3: Invest in the next wave of emissions reduction innovation

Priority 4: Ensure the NSW Government leads by example

The Net Zero Plan delivers on the objectives of the NSW Climate Change Policy Framework, which sets out the long-term policy directions for action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This includes the long-term objectives of NSW being more resilient to a changing climate and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

NSW councils play an important role in supporting decarbonisation through their local leadership, connection to communities and collective actions to support the state’s net zero objectives.

Local government and NSW agencies need robust information on sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including on the scale and location of these sources. Local-scale emissions data, which is consistent with published state-aggregated emissions, helps inform both state and local net zero emission actions.

The NSW Government’s Net Zero Emissions Modelling Program provides staged delivery of local-scale emissions data and information to support net zero actions across NSW. This dataset and methodology will be annually updated and improved.  

The first local-scale emissions dataset published in 2022 consists of greenhouse gas emissions by year from 2016 to 2019 at local government area (LGA) scale. Years shown are financial year, and so cover the 12 months ending 30 June of that year. To support emissions profiling by source, emissions are given by sector using the sector classes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories[1]. 

Greenhouse gas emission estimates are expressed as the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂-e) using the 100-year global warming potentials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report[2], consistent with the Australian Government’s National Inventory Reporting.  

Data and details of the dataset are available through the SEED portal.

Read more about the assumptions and methods used in deriving local-scale emissions in the NSW Regional and local greenhouse gas emissions methods paper.

[1] IPCC 2019,  2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/2019-refinement-to-the-2006-ipcc-guidelines-for-national-greenhouse-gas-inventories/  Calvo Buendia E. Tanabe K, Kranjc A, Baasansuren J, Fukuda M, Ngarize S, Osako A, Pyrozhenko Y, Shermanau P and Federici A (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1]

[2] IPCC 2013, Climate Change 2013: The physical science basis – contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Stocker TF, Qin D, Plattner G, Tignor MMB, Allen SK, Boschung J, Nauels A, Xia Y, Bex V & Midgley P (eds), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1]