Darwin Landfill Gas Project

Darwin Landfill Gas Project is a landfill gas electricity generation project located at the Shoal Bay Waste Management Facility, approximately 15km northeast of the Darwin CBD in the Northern Territory. It was registered in August 2012 and covers an unspecified area. The immediate area is utilized for municipal waste management, while the broader regional land use includes urban development, light industrial areas, and native tropical savanna.

Electricity generation from landfill gas projects involves capturing methane emissions produced by decomposing organic waste within a landfill and using it to fuel engines that generate electricity. Standard requirements for this methodology involve installing and operating an active gas collection system, such as extraction wells and pipelines, and accurately metering the volume and quality of gas combusted to verify greenhouse gas abatement.

The Darwin region features a tropical savanna climate, characterized by a distinct wet and dry season with high monsoonal rainfall during the summer months. Soils in the area are typically lateritic, consisting predominantly of weathered red earths, clays, and sandy loams.

The project is operated by LMS Energy, which commissioned a 1.1-megawatt bioenergy facility at the site in 2005, marking Australia's first landfill-biogas-to-energy project in the tropical north. It continues to capture and combust gas generated from both legacy and non-legacy waste. The extracted biogas, which is approximately 50 percent methane, is used to fuel a modified Caterpillar engine, producing about 10,000 megawatt-hours of baseload renewable electricity annually, enough to power over 1,200 local homes. Additionally, the project transitioned across multiple method variations before successfully completing its fixed-delivery carbon abatement contract (CAC783640) with the Clean Energy Regulator in April 2022.