Capture and Combustion of Landfill Gas at Dunmore Recycling and Waste Disposal Depot, Shellharbour City Council

Capture and Combustion of Landfill Gas at Dunmore Recycling and Waste Disposal Depot, Shellharbour City Council is a landfill gas (electricity generation) project located at Dunmore, approximately 20km south of Wollongong in New South Wales. Registered in January 2014, the project footprint covers an unspecified area bounded within the active Dunmore Recycling and Waste Disposal Depot.

Electricity generation from landfill gas projects involve capturing methane, a potent greenhouse gas generated by the decomposition of organic matter in landfills, and combusting it via a generator to produce renewable electricity. This methodology prevents harmful methane emissions from entering the atmosphere while simultaneously creating a sustainable energy resource.

The surrounding Dunmore and Shellharbour area features a blend of coastal residential developments, industrial quarrying, and rural lands utilized for grazing and dairy farming. The local climate is considered high rainfall, receiving well over 1,000mm of precipitation annually. The soils in the region are generally acidic and highly variable, ranging from highly fertile loams on local hills to sandy and alluvial profiles along the lower plains and creeks.

Project activities entail the installation of a new landfill gas collection system and the continued operation of a legacy system that captures and combusts gas from both legacy and non-legacy waste. Over its lifetime, the project has undergone several variations; it transitioned from a revoked early CFI method, updated its participant registry to LGI Limited in 2020, and moved to the updated electricity generation methodology in February 2022. An abatement contract (CAC742375) tied to this project was initiated in May 2016 and successfully fulfilled in June 2023. A notable fact about the host site is that the Dunmore Recycling and Waste Disposal Depot, supported by strong local community recycling and organics programs, projects its landfill capacity to last until 2058.