ACT OCSE Investigation into Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Report on Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Australian Capital Territory by UNSW Sydney, the University of Sydney and CSIRO Land and Water

As centres for economic and population growth, cities play a major role in the increase of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study applies an environmentally extended, nested, multi-region input-output (MRIO)
database to investigate the ACT’s Scope 3 GHG emissions by undertaking a full CF assessment of both direct and embodied emissions. The study determines the current sources of Scope 3 emissions, provides details of sectoral composition and geographical sources and cross border flows of ACT Scope 3 emissions, and provides a time series of projected Scope 3 emissions to 2050 following a high-ambition mitigation scenario.
The results (Section 3) reveal that Scope 3 embodied emissions made up 83% of the ACT’s total CF in 2018. The magnitude of embodied emissions confirms that the Territory is a consumer city which relies on imported emissions - from Australia and the world - to satisfy private, public and corporate consumption and investments. Households make up the largest share of consumption-based emissions (59%), followed by government (33%) and businesses (8.2%). When broken down by main product group, the main hotspots for embodied emissions
are: transport, postal and warehousing (16.8% of the total CF), food (9.9%, including all food items), retail trade (9.2%), construction (7.4%), public administration and safety (7.3%), and manufacturing (7.2%).