Shoalhaven Landfill Gas Abatement Facility (Revoked)

The Shoalhaven Landfill Gas Abatement Facility (Revoked) is a landfill gas capture project located at the West Nowra Recycling and Waste Depot, approximately 5km west of the central business district of Nowra, New South Wales. Originally registered in August 2013, the project operated within the Shoalhaven City Council's primary waste management facility. The site is situated in a region defined by a mix of forestry, peri-urban development, and light industrial land use, sitting just inland from the NSW South Coast.

The project operated under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Landfill Gas) Methodology Determination 2015. This methodology credits the destruction of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released by decomposing organic waste, by capturing it via a network of wells and pipes. The captured gas is then combusted, either through flaring or electricity generation, converting the methane into less harmful carbon dioxide. While the project is currently listed as revoked (voluntarily closed) as of February 2021, the gas capture infrastructure remains active.

Environmentally, the Nowra region is characterized by a temperate climate with high annual rainfall (averaging over 900mm), which accelerates the decomposition of organic waste and subsequently increases landfill gas generation rates. The local geology typically consists of Nowra Sandstone, resulting in soils that are often sandy loams or clays, the latter of which are often utilized in landfill lining to prevent leachate migration.

A key factor in the project's history and revocation was its transition from a pure abatement activity to a renewable energy asset. Originally managed with AGL Energy Services, the project transitioned to Shoalhaven City Council in 2019, who partnered with LGI Limited. Following the revocation of this specific ACCU project ID in early 2021, LGI commissioned a 1.06MW renewable power station at the site in June 2021. This timing suggests the revocation likely facilitated a switch from claiming ACCUs for flaring to generating Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) for electricity fed into the grid, or a restructuring of how the abatement was registered.