Gove Alternate Power Generation Project

The Gove Alternate Power Generation Project is an industrial energy efficiency project located at the Rio Tinto Gove Operations on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory. The project site is situated immediately adjacent to the town of Nhulunbuy, approximately 650km east of Darwin. Registered in October 2015, the project operates under the Industrial Electricity and Fuel Efficiency methodology.

This methodology rewards projects that reduce emissions by upgrading energy-consuming equipment or switching to less carbon-intensive fuels. In the context of this project, the activity was triggered by the curtailment of the Gove alumina refinery in 2014. The refinery's closure significantly reduced the site's energy demand, rendering the existing heavy fuel oil (HFO) power station, originally designed to supply massive amounts of steam and electricity, highly inefficient for the remaining operations. The project involved decommissioning this HFO infrastructure and installing a smaller, more efficient network of diesel generators to power the ongoing bauxite mine and the township of Nhulunbuy.

The Gove Peninsula experiences a tropical monsoon climate, characterized by a distinct wet season (November to April) with high humidity and heavy rainfall often exceeding 1,300mm annually, and a warm dry season. The local terrain is defined by its extensive bauxite deposits, resulting in the region's iconic deep red lateritic soils which are the primary resource for the mining operations.

An interesting aspect of this project is its role in supporting the local community; unlike many industrial carbon projects that solely serve a facility, this power station provides essential electricity to the remote township of Nhulunbuy. While the switch to diesel generators reduced emissions compared to the previous heavy fuel oil baseline, the site continues to evolve, with Rio Tinto recently entering agreements to integrate solar power into the Gove grid to further decarbonize operations before the mine's planned closure later in the decade.