NGER scope reconciliation: Scope 1 vs Scope 2 vs Climate Active

Scope confusion is the single most common error in Australian emissions reporting. NGER publishes:

• Scope 1 (direct emissions) at the corporate level.
• Scope 2 (indirect from purchased energy) at the corporate level.
• Scope 1 at facility level for the electricity generation sector only.

NGER does not cover Scope 3. Climate Active (Australia’s voluntary carbon-neutral certification) requires Scope 3 separately, with location-based and market-based Scope 2 distinction.

Explicit scope selection

library(cer)
cer_snapshot("2026-04-24")

corp <- cer_nger_corporate(year = 2025)

scope1 <- cer_nger_scope(corp, scope = "1")
head(scope1[, c("reporting_corporation", "emissions_t_co2e", "scope")])

scope12 <- cer_nger_scope(corp, scope = "1_plus_2")
sum(scope12$emissions_t_co2e, na.rm = TRUE)

If the scope column is missing (NGER renames columns year to year), the error message lists available columns so you can pass col_pattern explicitly.

Climate Active translator

ca <- cer_nger_climate_active(corp)
ca_cols <- grep("operational_scope", names(ca), value = TRUE)
head(ca[, c("reporting_corporation", ca_cols)])

The renamed columns match a typical Climate Active inventory template: operational_scope_1_t_co2e, operational_scope_2_market_t_co2e, operational_scope_2_location_t_co2e.

Reconciling facility-level electricity to corporate-level

Electricity is the only sector with facility-level Scope 1 in NGER. Facility-level total should reconcile to the corporate-level electricity total, within rounding.

elec_fac <- cer_nger_electricity(year = 2025)

# Electricity subset at corporate level (heuristic: ANZSIC 26 or
# a "generation" substring).
elec_corp <- corp[grepl("electric|power|generat",
                         corp$reporting_corporation,
                         ignore.case = TRUE), ]

fac_total <- sum(elec_fac$emissions_t_co2e, na.rm = TRUE)
corp_total <- sum(elec_corp$scope_1_emissions_t_co2e, na.rm = TRUE)

# Gap is informative: mismatch suggests corporate/facility
# attribution differs or NGER updated one but not the other.
pct_gap <- (fac_total - corp_total) / corp_total
pct_gap

A gap above 5 per cent is worth investigating before reporting aggregate electricity emissions.