Capture and Combustion of Landfill Gas from Saltwater Creek Landfill, Maryborough, QLD

Capture and Combustion of Landfill Gas from Saltwater Creek Landfill, Maryborough, QLD is an electricity generation from landfill gas project located approximately 4km north of the Maryborough town center in the Fraser Coast region of Queensland. It was registered in December 2013 by LGI Limited in partnership with the Fraser Coast Regional Council. The specific project area footprint is not disclosed in the public registry. The Maryborough area is known for agricultural land uses, historically sugarcane farming and grazing, along with timber and forestry operations. The environment is characterized by a humid subtropical climate with highly variable, summer-dominant rainfall averaging around 1,166mm annually. Soils in the Maryborough coastal and inland areas commonly include low-fertility Podosols (coastal sands) and Kandosols (sandy to loamy surface soils grading to clay).

The project operates under the Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas methodology. Landfill gas projects involve installing a gas collection system to capture biogas, which consists largely of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas produced by the decomposition of organic waste. The standard requirements of this methodology involve actively collecting the landfill gas, continuously monitoring gas flow and methane concentration, and combusting it either via a flare or an internal combustion engine. This process combusts the methane into less harmful carbon dioxide, while displacing fossil-fuel energy if used for electricity generation.

At the Saltwater Creek Landfill, LGI Limited installed a gas collection system alongside a 1.7MW generator, capturing and combusting methane generated from both legacy and non-legacy waste to create dispatchable renewable energy. This project has undergone several regulatory updates over its lifespan, transitioning from a revoked 2012 Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) method to the 2015 Landfill Gas methodology, before finally updating to the 2021 Electricity Generation methodology. Furthermore, the project successfully completed a carbon abatement contract (CAC342427) with the Australian Government, which was secured in 2013 and officially fulfilled in February 2022.