The Western Australian Government is building a platform for state agencies and Government Business Enterprises (GTEs) to self-report their CO2 production against reduction targets.
The tender to provide the “Interactive Online Greenhouse Gas Emissions Monitoring and Reporting System” was issued by the Western Australia Department of Water and Environmental Regulation (DWER).
The whole-of-government platform will track approximately 100 agencies and GTE’s progress in implementing individual reductions to support the state’s 2030 reduction goal.
The McGowan government announced in June last year that it wants government agencies and GTEs to reduce CO2 emissions to 80 percent of 2020 levels by 2030. The target does not apply to private industry.
According to the tender documents, the 100 organizations covered by the emissions reporting system produce an average of 7.3 million tons of emissions per year.
A handful of WA GTEs have already reported to the Commonwealth’s National Greenhouse and Energy (NGER) reporting scheme since 2008, such as government-owned electricity provider Western Power.
Public sector bodies used to report to the state’s ‘government emissions accounting and reporting system’ scheme until it was phased out in 2012.
A functional requirement of the new solution will be the easy conversion of data to the formats required by NGER.
End users will be able to report, analyze, calculate and track their sources of emissions through an online dashboard-style user interface.
The cloud-based database will collect scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and energy-related sources of emissions, such as gas use, and non-energy-related sources of emissions, such as livestock or travel of the employees.
Some data sources will be fed into the system automatically, such as electricity and gas usage data generated from agency monthly and quarterly account billing data.
The provider must ensure that data sources are preserved, emission factors are up-to-date, and that alerts, warnings of data discrepancies or broken data sources are automatically reported.
Security requirements include that all client data is hosted in Australia, encrypted with a key length of 128 bits or longer, end users only have access to their own agency data, and data is archived in hard copies. offline security.
Applications are open until March 22. The first six months of the one-year contract will consist of initial system evaluation, design, configuration, and pilot testing.
The second phase is also anticipated to take approximately six months and will involve connecting all government agencies to the emissions tracking system.
Phase three covers the operation and maintenance of the system for the remainder of the contract term. It will involve responsibilities such as assisting DWER with user license management and assisting with agency coordination and data collection.
The contract has four one-year extension options.
