Awaba Landfill Gas Project

Awaba Landfill Gas Project is a landfill gas capture and electricity generation project located at the Awaba Waste Management Facility, approximately 5km east of the village of Awaba and 20km southwest of Newcastle in NSW. It was registered in February 2013 and operates on a major municipal landfill site managed by the Lake Macquarie City Council. The surrounding Lake Macquarie and Hunter region is known for a mix of coastal urban residential development, forestry, and historical coal mining. The region is classified as having a high rainfall coastal climate, and the local soils generally consist of sandstone-derived sandy clays and loams.

The project operates under the Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas methodology. Projects of this type involve installing an active gas collection system to capture methane-rich biogas generated as organic legacy and non-legacy waste decomposes in the landfill. Standard requirements dictate that the captured methane must be combusted in a generator to produce renewable electricity, significantly reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions by preventing raw methane from venting into the atmosphere and displacing fossil-fuel-derived energy on the grid.

LMS Energy Pty Ltd is the project proponent and acts as the specialist contractor managing the gas extraction and power facility on behalf of the council. An interesting historical note is that in September 2013, the Clean Energy Regulator required LMS Energy to relinquish 22,941 Kyoto ACCUs in relation to its Wollert Landfill Gas Project; these units were subsequently relinquished from the Awaba project. Additionally, this project was part of a major Commonwealth Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC783640) awarded in April 2015. By the time the contract was successfully completed in April 2022, the Awaba site, alongside several other LMS Energy landfill projects (including Albury, Darwin, and Newcastle), had delivered over 1.56 million tonnes of abatement to the Australian Government.