☀️📉 Heat pumps, air fryers... or LNG? What's Driving Stationary Energy Cuts?

Good Monday evening and welcome to your climate data briefing. 🏟️

Last issue, we started looking at Australia's latest greenhouse gas update, categorising emissions changes into real cuts ☀️ or volume-related volatility 📉. (Catch-up here.)

Today, we're focusing on the country's third-biggest emitting sector – stationary energy.

It's a great name if you want most people to be both confused and bored. But it's the important third piece of the energy emissions puzzle, after electricity and transport.

It includes fuel combustion in homes, buildings, and industrial facilities (excluding electricity generation). 🏭

Let's dive in. 🤿

Big Picture

Emissions from stationary energy make up 22% of Australia's total.

Since 2005, they have risen by nearly 20%. But they’ve been falling for four years.

In the year to December 2025, emissions fell 1.6%.

DCCEEW* gave two reasons:

☀️ Real cut: gas use in homes fell
📉 Volume-related: gas extraction fell

Let's take a look at each.

☀️ Gas in homes

Nearly half of Australia's homes have active gas accounts (5.3 million).

The chart below shows total customer numbers across Australia, excluding the NT.

The data stops a year ago, in June 2025, but you can already see growth slowing.

Below is the same data by state and territory.

Victoria has by far the most gas customers, followed by NSW and WA.

We also compared gas customer numbers with total dwellings.*

Nearly three-quarters of Victorian homes (74%) have active gas accounts.

In WA and the ACT, the figures are roughly two-thirds: 65% and 68%, respectively.

In NSW, 44% of homes have gas, but the state is still the second-biggest contributor to the national picture.

The chart below indexes every state and territory to 100 in June 2021 (the earliest point for which we have data across all jurisdictions).

Notice how the ACT and Tasmania have shed customers. Victoria has flattened. NSW dipped, then popped back up this year.

But gas customer numbers aren't necessarily the best guide to emissions.

The chart below shows the real amount of gas households use.

The data only runs to June 2024, making it two years old 😤, but the trend is still revealing.

While customers continued to grow, actual gas use fell.

Because this comes from retail performance data, it should exclude dormant connections.

That means the average amount of gas used per household has dropped.

Appliance-level electrification appears to be happening.

📉 Oil and gas extraction

DCCEEW said the other reason stationary energy emissions fell was lower gas use in oil and gas extraction.

Gas use in the oil and gas industry is roughly three times residential gas use.

Again, we only have gas-use data to June 2024, when it was hovering around its peak.

But based on the emissions data (ironically, our leading indicator 🫠), we can expect that figure has since fallen.

It seems bizarre, but outside electricity generation, Australia's biggest gas user is the industry that produces it.

Which brings us to the driver behind the driver – LNG exports.

DCCEEW says LNG exports have been 'an important driver of emissions trends in stationary energy over the last 9 years.'

Extracting gas, liquefying it, shipping it overseas and regasifying it at the destination is hugely energy-intensive.

The chart below shows how gas use in the sector closely mirrors LNG exports.

The export data runs to June 2025. Notice how exports have dipped.

What does it all mean?

Let's come back to the big picture.

How much has each of these factors contributed to the recent emissions decline?

Last issue, we looked for decoupling, where emissions separate from activity.

That approach doesn't work well for stationary energy because several different activities feed into the emissions curve.

So we did a rough estimate ourselves.

It's not worthy of an IPCC submission, but it gives a much clearer sense of what's driving the trend.

Natural gas has an emissions factor of 51.53 kg CO₂-e / GJ.*

Applying that to the gas-use data gives an approximate breakdown for the year to June 2024:

• Residential gas (140 PJ): 7.2 Mt CO₂-e
• Oil and gas extraction (402 PJ): 20.7 Mt CO₂-e

The chart below applies that logic across the full time series.

It clearly shows most of the emissions growth since 2005 has come from the oil and gas sector.

Residential gas emissions, by contrast, have been small and stable for two decades.

Over the same period, the rest of the sector grew by just 3%.

Remember, this analysis only covers emissions from burning gas.

OnlyFacts also tracks the total emissions reported by oil and gas facilities under the Safeguard Mechanism.

Around 29 facilities owned by 22 companies fall into this group. Together, they emitted about double the estimate above: 42.2 Mt CO₂-e in the latest available financial year. (See the dashboard here.)

Changes in stationary energy emissions are being driven by 22 companies.

Not 5.3 million homes. 

*Data notes

• 2021 gas customer figures were used to align with the latest Census data.
• Emissions factor for natural gas transmitted or distributed in a pipeline. Source: Climatiq.

Data sources:

Australian Energy Regulator (AER); Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (DCCEEW) – Australian Energy Statistics 2025 (Table F) and Quarterly Greenhouse Gas Accounts; Essential Services Commission, Victoria (ESC); Economic Regulation Authority, WA (ERA); Office of the Tasmanian Economic Regulator (OTTER).

Next week, we'll be back with quantish reads and data updates.

Wishing you a safe and productive week ahead.

💛 Juliette and the OnlyFacts team