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How Zerra works, where the data comes from, and why Australia's clean energy transition needs a plain-English layer on top of it.
Zerra makes Australia's clean energy data easy to understand. The Australian government collects detailed data on renewable energy — every solar panel installed, every certificate created, every tonne of emissions avoided. That data is public, but it's buried in spreadsheets and government registries.
Zerra surfaces it by postcode so anyone can see what's happening in their community, and what it means.
Zerra is a product of ZerraLedger Pty Ltd, founded in August 2025 by Oliver Moran. Oliver spent over a decade as a senior digital and technology leader at Qantas, working on the platforms customers use every day — including early work on how sustainability data like Sustainable Aviation Fuel could be integrated into digital products.
What became clear through that work was a bigger problem: Australia's clean energy data is authoritative and public, but almost impossible for non-specialists to read. ZerraLedger was founded to fix that. Zerra launched in March 2026 as its first platform.
Zerra draws from multiple authoritative public sources. Installation and certificate data comes directly from the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) via API — the government agency that administers Australia's renewable energy schemes. Grid emissions intensity data comes from OpenElectricity, Australia's leading open-source electricity data platform.
We also incorporate the CER Quarterly Carbon Market Report and other trusted public sources where they add depth and context. We continue to add more sources to make the platform richer over time.
Very current. Zerra pulls directly from the CER API and the OpenElectricity API, so data reflects the latest available figures at the time of each build. The CER publishes updated postcode data monthly.
Zerra is the first platform. ZerraLedger's direction is to become an API-based traceability platform for low-carbon liquid fuels — including Sustainable Aviation Fuel — built on and aligned with the Clean Energy Regulator's evolving data roadmap.
The goal is climate data that is traceable, machine-readable, and trustworthy across the supply chains that need it most: aviation, road transport, and marine.
An STC — Small-scale Technology Certificate — is equal to 1 megawatt-hour of renewable electricity generated, stored, or displaced by an eligible system. When a household or business installs rooftop solar, wind, or a battery, they earn STCs based on the expected output of that system.
Those certificates are typically sold to electricity retailers, with the value applied as an upfront discount on installation cost — which is why solar installers advertise a "government rebate."
Each kilowatt-hour of solar electricity generated displaces electricity that would otherwise come from the grid. The grid has an average emissions intensity — measured in grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour — that varies by state and changes as more renewables come online.
Zerra uses grid emissions intensity data from OpenElectricity to calculate the approximate CO₂ avoided by solar installations in each postcode. The figure is a directional estimate, not a certified audit. Where we make calculations, we show our methodology.
Grid intensity is how much CO₂ is emitted per unit of electricity generated, expressed in grams per kilowatt-hour (gCO₂/kWh). A coal-heavy grid has high intensity. A grid with significant renewables has lower intensity.
This matters because the CO₂ a solar panel avoids depends on what it's replacing. Solar in Victoria currently displaces more emissions per kilowatt-hour than solar in South Australia — not because the panels are different, but because South Australia's grid is already so renewables-heavy that there's less fossil generation left to displace.
The GO Scheme is a voluntary certification framework launched by the Clean Energy Regulator in November 2025. It tracks the emissions intensity of products — starting with hydrogen — and verifies that the renewable electricity used to make them was genuinely clean.
Think of a GO certificate as a verified passport for clean energy: it proves not just that renewable electricity was generated, but when, where, and what it powered. This matters for industries that need verified low-emissions credentials to access government incentives or meet international export standards.
REGO stands for Renewable Electricity Guarantee of Origin — the electricity-specific certificate within the GO Scheme. REGOs include hourly timestamping, which means a company can prove their renewable electricity was generated at the same time it was consumed, not just sometime during the year.
This level of granularity is important for green hydrogen producers and others who need to meet strict international certification standards.
A Large-scale Generation Certificate (LGC) represents one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity from a large generator — a wind farm or utility-scale solar farm. LGCs have been Australia's main renewable energy certificate for over a decade.
The GO Scheme introduced REGOs alongside LGCs in November 2025. Both run in parallel through to 2030 when the Renewable Energy Target ends. REGOs then continue as the primary certificate type. During the transition, only one certificate can be issued per unit of energy.
Because not all clean energy claims are equal. Traceability — knowing the source, time, and method of production — is what separates a verified low-emissions claim from an unverifiable one.
The GO Scheme exists precisely to answer this question at scale, with government-backed certificates. ZerraLedger's longer-term direction is building the data infrastructure to make these claims legible and machine-readable across the supply chains that need them most.
SAF is jet fuel made from renewable or low-carbon sources rather than fossil kerosene. Feedstocks range from used cooking oil and agricultural residues to green hydrogen and captured CO₂. SAF works in existing aircraft without modification and can reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80–90% compared to conventional jet fuel — currently the most viable decarbonisation pathway for long-haul aviation.
LCLF is the broader category that SAF belongs to — drop-in replacements for fossil fuels made from renewable or low-emissions feedstocks. They work through existing fuel infrastructure and in existing engines without modification.
The sectors that need them most are aviation, road transport, and marine shipping — the hard-to-abate industries where electrification alone isn't a sufficient near-term solution. The Australian Government has identified LCLF as a priority sector under its Future Made in Australia agenda.
Yes — that's where Zerra is heading. The CER is expanding the GO Scheme to cover LCLF, expected late 2026. As that data becomes accessible via the CER API, Zerra will surface it the same way it surfaces solar data: by source, by volume, in plain language.
The goal is to make Australia's entire clean energy certificate ecosystem legible to anyone — not just the companies and traders who currently navigate it.
Zerra presents data sourced from the Clean Energy Regulator and OpenElectricity — we don't generate, model, or adjust the underlying figures. Both are authoritative Australian sources. Where we make derived calculations (like CO₂ avoided), we document our methodology openly.
If you find an error or want to verify a figure, every page links back to the source data.
The data exists — and it's public. But it lives in large downloadable spreadsheets, government registries, and API endpoints written for technical industry participants. There's no interface designed for a homeowner, a journalist, a local councillor, or a policy researcher who wants to understand what's happening in their postcode.
Zerra is that interface — and as the Clean Energy Regulator's data coverage expands through GO and REGO, Zerra's coverage will expand with it.