Australia's energy use has increased

Australia's total energy use has increased by 15% over the last six years, according to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The manufacturing, electricity, gas and water industries were the largest domestic energy users, while households used 12% of this energy.

Over half of household energy use was on fuels such as petrol, diesel and LPG, about one quarter was on electricity, and the remainder on products such as natural gas, biomass and solar.

In its first attempt at presenting both physical and monetary aspects of energy use, the ABS found that the manufacturing industry was the largest user of electricity in 2004–05 at 313 petajoules (86.9 billion kilowatt hours), with an experimental value of $3585m, while households used 215 petajoules (59.7 billion kilowatt hours), with an experimental value of $7818m.

The gap between Australia's production and consumption of petroleum continues to grow. In the six years to 2006–07, crude oil production fell 21%; exports of crude oil and refined products fell 31%, while imports grew by 35%.

Despite increases in the supply of renewable energy products, renewables such as hydroelectricity, wood biomass, wind and solar made up just over 1% of Australia's total energy production in 2006–07.

Energy intensity in mining has doubled over the last 30 years due to a number of factors, including a shift towards more open-cut mining.

In contrast, there have been large decreases in energy intensity in other industries, such as construction (74%) and transport (50%).