Cedars Road Landfill Gas Extraction and Combustion

Cedars Road Landfill Gas Extraction and Combustion is a landfill gas extraction and combustion project located at the Cedars Road waste facility in South Bingera, approximately 20km from the major regional centre of Bundaberg in Queensland. Registered in February 2014, the project footprint covers an unknown area and operates under a long-term partnership between LGI Limited and the Bundaberg Regional Council. The broader Bundaberg region is renowned for its intensive agriculture, particularly sugar cane, macadamia, potato, and vegetable farming. These agricultural operations are supported by a sub-tropical, summer-dominant high rainfall climate, averaging around 1,110mm annually, and highly fertile soils that include Ferrosols (volcanic red soils) and sandy to clay loams along the coastal plains.

Landfill gas projects operating under the Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas methodology involve the installation, operation, and maintenance of a specialised gas collection network within a landfill site. These systems are required to actively capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas naturally produced during the decomposition of organic legacy and non-legacy waste. Standard requirements involve capturing the gas and combusting it to either flare it into less harmful carbon dioxide or use it to run engines that generate renewable electricity, thereby preventing significant emissions from seeping into the atmosphere.

This specific project transitioned from a revoked Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) legacy waste method to the 2021 electricity generation methodology determination. Historically, the facility has extracted and flared tens of millions of cubic metres of methane, mitigating emissions equivalent to taking tens of thousands of cars off the road for a year. In March 2015, the project participant officially varied from the Bundaberg Regional Council to Landfill Gas Industries Pty Ltd (now LGI Limited), though 4,047 ACCUs were successfully issued to the Council in the 2014/15 financial year. The carbon credits generated by this project assist the council in funding these best-practice gas extraction systems. Additionally, the project secured a fixed delivery Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC333101) in April 2015 to deliver 202,246 ACCUs, which has now been successfully completed.