Updated pollution inventory of Australia released
The 2007/08 National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) emission data was released this week. The NPI provides the community, industry and government with free information about substance emissions in Australia and is a cooperative program implemented by the Federal, State and Territory Governments.
The latest data provides estimates for the emissions of 90 toxic substances from 414 sources and covers 4116 facilities across Australia
The NPI reports on pollutant emissions from industry and diffuse sources, by location. Industrial facilities are required to report emissions to the NPI if they use more than a certain amount of one or more substances on the NPI reporting list, or consume more than a specified amount of fuel or electricity, or emit more than a certain amount of nitrogen or phosphorus to water.
Although it doesn’t cover the 6 Kyoto greenhouse gases, data collection and reporting for NPI does follow a similar, albeit more complex, methodology NGERS and the GHG Protocol. For many organisation that have previously reported under NPI and are now also required to report under NGERS, they are simply expanding that reporting to include greenhouse gases.
Whilst this is a logical way of addressing the NGERS reporting requirements, it does present some challenges. Given the financial implications of NGERS, the reporting process must be robust, highly transparent and able to stand up to external audit by the regulator. This has never been a requirement for NPI reporting and so the reporting processes within organisations may need to be reviewed to ensure they’re up to scratch.
For those of you who are interested, there’s an excellent Google Earth layer that’s been developed that plots NPI data from Australian polluters. The screenshot below shows NPI data from Perth facilities looking North up the coast. You can read more about this at the Google Earth community group.
Tags: NPI
