The Coffs Harbour City Council Landfill Legacy Emissions Avoidance Project

The Coffs Harbour City Council Landfill Legacy Emissions Avoidance Project is a landfill gas project located at the Englands Road Waste Management Facility, situated just south of the Coffs Harbour city centre in New South Wales. It was registered in August 2013 and targets greenhouse gas emissions from both legacy and non-legacy waste.

Landfill gas projects involve the installation of a gas collection system, typically a network of extraction wells and pipes, into a landfill to capture methane-rich biogas generated by decomposing organic matter. The captured methane is then safely combusted through a flare or used in an engine for electricity generation. This process converts the potent methane into carbon dioxide, drastically reducing the overall global warming potential of the site's emissions.

The surrounding Coffs Harbour region is a prominent coastal area known for suburban development, extensive national parks, and agriculture, historically renowned for banana and blueberry farming. The region experiences a humid subtropical climate characterised by high rainfall. Soils around the site generally consist of residual soil landscapes such as podzolics and kurosols with clay subsoils, while sandy loams are more common closer to the coast. The Englands Road facility itself is engineered to manage this high coastal rainfall, retaining runoff up to a 5-day 90th percentile rainfall event to protect local water catchments.

This transitioning project has been operational for over a decade, most recently updating its methodology to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative-Landfill Gas) Methodology Determination 2015 (Compilation No. 1). With waste management specialists MRA Consulting Group acting as the project agent, the Coffs Harbour City Council successfully delivered on its Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC102339) established in April 2016, which is now marked as fully completed.