The Net Zero Emissions Dashboard presents past and projected future greenhouse gas emissions for New South Wales. This interactive dashboard provides state and local government, business and communities with insight into emission trends and progress being made towards the goals of reducing the state’s emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030, 70% below 2005 levels by 2035 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

The future emissions projections for NSW out to 2050 and local-scale emissions by local government area (LGA) for selected recent years presented were developed by the NSW Government’s NSW Net Zero Emissions Modelling Program.  Emissions are presented by financial year and by sector, using the sector definitions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, to be consistent with the NSW Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Future emissions projections developed in 2023 are presented in the Dashboard. These projections are given for business as usual (BAU) and two current policy scenarios.

The BAU scenario accounts for major factors impacting NSW emissions including past state policies but excludes the impact of actions under the Net Zero Plan and related Government policies and programs.

The NSW current policy emission projections account for the impact of:

• current policies and programs under Stage 1 of the Net Zero Plan,
• future initiatives related to reducing emissions supported by the NSW Climate Change Fund (CCF) under Stages 2 and 3 of the Plan; and
• related policies including NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Climate Change Policy and Action Plan and the Commonwealth’s Safeguard Mechanism.

The current policy projections are now split into two scenarios:

• as designed: this scenario takes the BAU scenario and adjusts the emissions trajectory based on the designed abatement and timelines in existing NSW and Commonwealth policies and programs.
• as tracking: this scenario adjusts the as designed scenario to reflect increased uncertainties in expected emissions reductions under certain programs and policies.

Past emissions from 1990 onwards are from the NSW Greenhouse Gas Inventory and the National Greenhouse Accounts compiled by the Australian Government. These emissions are presented for each year by IPCC sector and by Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) economic sector.

Read more about the assumptions and methods used in the future emissions projections in the NSW Greenhouse gas emissions projections 2023 methods paper. Information on data, assumptions and methods applied to derive local emissions is contained in the NSW Regional and local greenhouse gas emissions methods paper.

The datasets, method papers and dashboard will be updated annually.

Attribution: © State Government of NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Net Zero Emissions Dashboard 2022-2050. [Dashboard Page title]. Version [Month 20YY]. Accessed from The Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data Portal.

Details of the version and updated date can be found on the bottom of the left menu panel.