Methodology

Where the data comes from.

Every number on Zerra is sourced from the Clean Energy Regulator. This page covers where each product's data comes from, how often it refreshes, and what its limitations are.

01
Refresh cadence by product

All data traces back to one source — the Clean Energy Regulator (cer.gov.au) — but each product refreshes on its own schedule, matching how often the underlying government dataset changes.

ProductSourceCadence
Market pulseREC Registry APILive / daily
GO RegisterGO Scheme registerLive
Market snapshotQuarterly Carbon Market ReportQuarterly
Carbon projectsACCU Scheme project registerMonthly
LRET finderLRET project registerMonthly
Safeguard MechanismSafeguard annual dataAnnually
02
Safeguard Mechanism

Built from CER's annual Safeguard data release. The overview page shows national-level figures only — total covered emissions, total baselines, units surrendered — and does not rank or compare individual facilities.

Each of the 320 facility pages reports one company's numbers neutrally: reported emissions vs. baseline, and how any gap was covered — ACCUs or Safeguard Mechanism Credits surrendered. Pages are static, regenerated when CER publishes the next annual dataset.

Annual only. Safeguard figures are reported once a year, for the prior financial year. There is no intra-year or real-time facility data — a facility's numbers won't change until the next annual release.
03
Carbon projects (ACCU Scheme)

Sourced from CER's ACCU Scheme project register. Browsable two ways — by method (soil carbon, landfill gas, savanna burning, plantation forestry, and others) and by state — both views are over the same underlying project list.

Project registration doesn't guarantee credits have been issued or that the project is still active; the register reflects CER's own project status at time of refresh.

04
GO Register & LRET finder

The Guarantee of Origin Register lists participants certified under the GO Scheme, currently covering renewable electricity and hydrogen, queried live from CER.

LRET finder searches 978 geocoded Large-scale Renewable Energy Target projects by postcode, with distance calculated as a straight-line (great-circle) distance from the entered postcode's centroid — not a driving distance.

05
Limitations & caveats
Government data, not Zerra's own judgement. Zerra doesn't editorialise, rank, or interpret the figures it shows — it presents what CER publishes. Any apparent gap or anomaly in a figure is a property of the source dataset, not a Zerra calculation.
Refresh lag. Because each product tracks a different CER dataset on a different cadence, products are not all "as of" the same date — check the date shown on each page.
Market pulse & GO Register availability. These two are proxied live from CER's own APIs. If CER's systems are down or slow, these pages inherit that.
06
Corrections

If you find a data error, use the contact form. Data corrections are turned around when possible, though this isn't an actively staffed support channel — see About.

Every figure on this site can be verified against the Clean Energy Regulator's own published data. That's the point.