City of Armadale Landfill Gas Flaring Project

City of Armadale Landfill Gas Flaring Project is a landfill gas capture and combustion project located at the Armadale Landfill and Recycling Facility in Hilbert, approximately 30km southeast of the Perth central business district in Western Australia. It was registered in July 2014. While the specific project area in hectares is unpublished, it encompasses the active and legacy waste cells of the municipal landfill.

Landfill gas projects involve installing specialized infrastructure, such as extraction wells and piping, to capture methane gas naturally emitted by decomposing organic waste. Under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative-Landfill Gas) Methodology Determination 2015, this captured methane must be combusted, most commonly using a flare, to convert it into carbon dioxide and water. Because methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, this flaring process significantly reduces the overall global warming potential of the emissions. The project is then issued Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) based on the accurately measured volume of methane destroyed.

The region surrounding Hilbert and the City of Armadale features a mix of urban development, municipal infrastructure, and peri-urban agricultural zones. The local environment experiences a Mediterranean climate characterized by moderate to high winter-dominant rainfall, averaging around 700 to 800mm annually. Geographically situated on the Swan Coastal Plain, the typical soils in the vicinity consist of deep, fine-to-medium grained eolian (wind-blown) sands overlying sandy clay.

This transitioning project was originally registered under a now-revoked Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) method before varying to the 2015 methodology in 2017, and later to its Compilation No. 1 in 2022. It successfully captures and combusts gas generated from both legacy and non-legacy waste. According to the City of Armadale's Corporate Greenhouse Action Plan, the council strategically extended the lifespan of this flaring project from 7 years to 12 years to maximize ACCU generation, and the project has successfully abated over 110,000 tonnes of carbon since its inception. Commercially, the project secured an early fixed delivery contract (CAC393085) with the Clean Energy Regulator in April 2015. This contract was successfully completed in December 2021, delivering a total of 68,006 ACCUs to the Commonwealth.