We report under NGER. Does that automatically capture us?

It can. If you are a corporation registered under the NGER Act and your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions are at or above the 50,000 tonne CO2-e publication threshold, you are in Group 1. Every other registered NGER corporation sits in Group 2, regardless of size.

Where do Australian emission factors come from?

The National Greenhouse Accounts Factors, published each year by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. They give Scope 1 factors by fuel and Scope 2 electricity factors by state and territory. NGER-registered corporations must use NGER measurement methods for their NGER reporting.

What is our organisational boundary and who decides it?

Your organisational boundary is the set of entities and facilities whose emissions you report, and the basis on which you include them. Management decides it, the board or audit committee approves it, and it should reconcile to the consolidated entity in your financial report. Operational control is the common Australian starting point, and the friction sits in joint ventures, leased sites, franchises and recent acquisitions.

Glossary›Regulation, capture and thresholds / Regulation, capture and timing›NGER Scheme

Glossary term

Cluster B · B16

Tier 1

NGER Scheme

Definition

The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme is Australia’s pre-existing mandatory emissions and energy reporting framework, administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. Controlling corporations that exceed the corporate or facility thresholds must register and report facility-level greenhouse gas emissions, energy production and energy consumption annually. It is a separate obligation from Corporations Act sustainability reporting.

National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (Cth)

· administered by the Clean Energy Regulator ·

In force

On this page

In practice
What the assurer does with it
Commonly confused with
Sources
Related terms
Related questions

Cluster

B · Regulation, capture and thresholds / Regulation, capture and timing, 26 terms

In practice

NGER has been running since 2008 and predates climate disclosure by more than fifteen years. Understanding what it is, and what it is not, resolves most of the confusion between the two regimes.

The thresholds. Registration is required where a controlling corporation’s group, or a facility under its operational control, crosses a threshold:

Level

Emissions (Scope 1 and Scope 2)

Energy produced

Energy consumed

Corporate group

50,000 tonnes CO₂-e or more

200 TJ or more

Facility

25,000 tonnes CO₂-e or more

100 TJ or more

Any one threshold triggers the obligation. The corporate group test aggregates across the group under the operational control concept, which is why an entity with no single large site can still be caught.

What it reports. Facility-level Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, energy production and energy consumption, calculated using the methods prescribed in the NGER Measurement Determination. The methods are prescriptive in a way AASB S2 is not: the determination specifies calculation methods and factor sources, and the National Greenhouse Accounts Factors supply the factor set.

Why it matters to a sustainability reporter even where the two do not overlap. NGER is where Australian emissions measurement practice comes from. The factor set, the operational control concept, the facility construct and most of the internal expertise in large Australian companies all originate here. An entity that already reports under NGER arrives at its first sustainability report with a working Scope 1 and Scope 2 inventory, which is a substantial head start.

Where the two regimes genuinely differ, and it catches people. NGER is operational control at facility level; AASB S2 lets an entity choose its organisational boundary. NGER covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 only; AASB S2 requires Scope 3. NGER reports to the Clean Energy Regulator on its own deadline; the sustainability report goes to ASIC on the Corporations Act deadline. And the numbers can legitimately differ between the two, because the boundaries and the periods can differ. An entity reporting different Scope 1 figures to two regulators for what looks like the same year is not necessarily wrong, but it needs to be able to explain the bridge.

What the assurer does with it

Where an entity is a NGER reporter, its NGER submission is one of the first documents the assurer requests, and it is strong evidence: externally lodged, prepared under a prescribed measurement determination, and subject to the Clean Energy Regulator’s own audit regime. The assurer reconciles the NGER Scope 1 and Scope 2 figures to the sustainability report figures and expects the differences explained by boundary, by period or by entities in one and not the other. They accept a documented bridge between the two. They reject an unexplained difference, and they reject a sustainability report figure that is simply the NGER figure where the AASB S2 organisational boundary is known to differ. A NGER submission that has been subject to a Clean Energy Regulator audit is treated as stronger again.

Commonly confused with

Corporations Act sustainability reporting itself. Same emissions, different regimes, different regulators, different boundaries, different deadlines, different content. Also confused with the Safeguard Mechanism, which sits on top of NGER for the largest facilities and is a separate obligation with its own entry.