Awaba Landfill Gas Project

Awaba Landfill Gas Project is a landfill gas to electricity project located at the Awaba Waste Management Facility, approximately 20km southwest of Newcastle in New South Wales. It was registered in February 2013. The site is situated within the Lake Macquarie region, which is surrounded predominantly by uncleared native vegetation on undulating terrain. The region experiences a coastal high-rainfall climate, with soils largely consisting of sandy loams and structured clays.

Landfill gas projects involve the active capture and combustion of methane generated by decomposing organic matter in landfill sites. Under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas) Methodology, this captured methane from both legacy and non-legacy waste is combusted to generate electricity, thereby preventing a potent greenhouse gas from venting into the atmosphere while producing renewable energy.

While the landfill itself is owned by the Lake Macquarie City Council, the gas collection system and the onsite Awaba Renewable Energy Facility are operated by the project proponent, LMS Energy Pty Ltd. The project has undergone several method transitions since its inception, updating through various iterations of landfill gas methodologies in 2015 and 2022. An interesting administrative note from September 2013 shows that 22,941 Kyoto ACCUs, which originally related to the Wollert Landfill Gas Project, were relinquished from this Awaba project's account. Furthermore, the Awaba project was part of a broader Commonwealth carbon abatement contract (CAC783640) awarded in April 2015. This contract successfully delivered a fixed obligation of 1,568,376 tonnes of abatement across several LMS Energy sites (including Albury, Darwin, Ipswich, Newcastle, Remount, and Wyong) before its completion in April 2022.