Darwin Landfill Gas Project

The Darwin Landfill Gas Project is a waste sector operation located at the Shoal Bay Waste Management Facility, approximately 12 kilometers northeast of Darwin’s city centre in the Northern Territory. Registered in August 2012, the project is operated by LMS Energy Pty Ltd in partnership with the City of Darwin. It serves as the primary waste management hub for the Greater Darwin region, situated near the Holmes Jungle Nature Park.

Operating under the Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas 2021 methodology, the project involves the capture and combustion of methane generated by decomposing organic waste. A network of wells and pipes extracts biogas from the landfill mass, which is then fed into a 1.1-megawatt generation unit. This process converts methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into carbon dioxide and renewable electricity, preventing it from venting into the atmosphere while displacing fossil-fuel-based power from the local grid.

The facility operates in a tropical savanna climate characterized by distinct wet and dry seasons. The region experiences very high rainfall during the summer months, which presents specific challenges for leachate management in the landfill's engineered clay and geosynthetic liners. The natural soil composition of the surrounding area typically consists of lateritic earths and sandy loams common to the Darwin coastal plain.

Notably, this was the first landfill-biogas-to-energy project established in Australia's tropical north. Since its commissioning, the project has abated over 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) and generates enough electricity to power thousands of local homes annually. The project has a long regulatory history, having transitioned through multiple methodology variations (from the original CFI to 2015, and finally to the 2021 method) to maintain compliance and credit issuance. It also successfully completed a Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC783640) with the Clean Energy Regulator in April 2022.