THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BOM AND ABS WATER ACCOUNTS
The water accounts produced by the ABS and BoM will provide complementary information.
The BoM National Water Account will provide information on total water resource, the volume of water available for abstraction, the rights to abstract water, and the actual abstraction of water for economic, social, cultural, and environmental benefit. In general terms the BoM account will report on volumes of water traded, extracted and managed for economic, public and environmental purposes across Australia. These data are broadly represented in the top half of Fig 1.7 relating to natural flows within the inland water resource system and the interface between the environment and the economy.
The ABS Water Account Australia reports on the supply and use of water in the economy and related economic information from the SNA (the system which produces the statistics of Gross Domestic Product among many other things). These data are broadly represented in the bottom half of Fig 1.7 showing flows within the economy and the interface between the economy and the environment.
The BoM produced a Pilot National Water Account in 2009 to test methods and processes to be deployed in the production of future accounts and demonstrate what a National Water Account might look like. The first National Water Account will be published in 2011, for the 2009-10 year, covering the Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne, Murray-Darling Basin, Ord, Perth, South-East Queensland and Sydney regions, with its preparation guided by first Australian Water Accounting Standard (WASB 2009b), which is currently in exposure draft form.
Both the BoM and the ABS water accounts are conceptually aligned with the SEEA-Water, although the degree of alignment is not complete. The ABS Water Account Australia is similar to the SEEA-Water physical and monetary supply and use tables and the hybrid account, while the BoM National Water Account has much in common with the SEEA-Water asset account.
Water consumption and water use
Calculating water use by industries is not straightforward. Water use can include self-extracted water, distributed water, or reuse water and sometimes a combination of all three sources are used. Calculating water use estimates for an industry or business is made more complicated when water is also supplied to other users, or when water is used in-stream (e.g. for cooling or hydro-power). As such simply adding self-extracted water, distributed water, and reuse water to derive a figure for total water use can be misleading.
In the Water Account Australia, volumes of water used and supplied by each industry have been balanced to derive 'water consumption'. This figure takes into account the different characteristics of water supply and use of industries and is a way of standardising water use, allowing for comparisons between industries. As such the following accounting identities have been used:
- Total water use is equal to the sum of Distributed water use, Self-extracted water use and Reuse water use;
- Water consumption is equal to the sum of Distributed water use, Self-extracted water use and Reuse water use less Water supplied to other users and less In-stream use. The use of Distributed water by the environment (Environmental Flows, see Explanatory Notes) is not included in total water consumption.
For most industries, water use and water consumption are the same as most industries do not have any in-stream use or supply water to other users. However, water consumption will be considerably different for some industries, specifically the
Water Supply, Sewerage and Drainage Services industry,
Electricity and Gas Supply industry and
Mining industry, where in-stream water use and water supply volumes are significant.
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