Lucas Heights 2 Landfill Gas Project

Lucas Heights 2 Landfill Gas Project is an electricity generation from landfill gas project located at Lucas Heights, approximately 30km southwest of the Sydney CBD in New South Wales. It was registered in December 2012 and covers an undefined project area centered around the active Lucas Heights municipal waste management facility.

Electricity generation from landfill gas projects involve capturing methane-rich gas generated by decomposing organic legacy and non-legacy waste within a landfill. Instead of allowing this potent greenhouse gas to vent into the atmosphere, the gas is collected and combusted in an internal combustion engine (such as a spark-ignition reciprocating engine) to generate electricity that is then exported to the national grid.

The Lucas Heights region is known for municipal waste management operations, the ANSTO nuclear research facility, and surrounding natural bushland. The area experiences high rainfall typical of the coastal Sydney Basin, and local soils are generally sandstone-derived sandy loams and clay loams.

Owned and operated by EDL LFG (NSW) Pty Ltd, this project has undergone several methodology variations. It originally transitioned from a revoked capture and combustion method in 2015, before updating again in February 2022 to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas) Methodology Determination 2021. The project successfully fulfilled a Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC781436), which was contracted in April 2015 and completed in September 2022. Operating alongside other significant generation infrastructure at the site, the project uses large-scale generator capacity to supply renewable bioenergy to the grid.