Australian households became more energy efficient in 2014-15, according to the latest edition of the annual Energy Account released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
"Despite a small increase in energy use, Australian households are becoming more efficient in their use of energy", said Lauren Binns from the ABS’ Environment and Agriculture Branch.
"On average, each Australian household used 117 gigajoules of energy in 2014-15, a 0.9 per cent decrease from 2013-14 and a 6.5 per cent decrease over the decade since 2004-05".
Australian industries also became more efficient in their use of energy between 2013-14 and 2014-15.
"While industry use of energy increased 0.6 per cent from 2013-14 to 2014-15, Australian industries used 1.5 per cent less energy for each million dollars of economic output", said Ms Binns.
As with previous years, the largest proportion of Australia’s energy use in 2014-15 was recorded as export commodities.
"Exports accounted for 71.4 per cent (or 15,725 petajoules) of total Australian energy use", said Ms Binns.
Overall Australian energy use was 22,026 petajoules in 2014-15, up 4.9 per cent from 2013-14.
