Hyland Highway Landfill Gas System Upgrade (Stage 1)

Hyland Highway Landfill Gas System Upgrade (Stage 1) is a landfill gas and electricity generation project located at the Hyland Highway Landfill in Loy Yang, approximately 9km south of Traralgon in the Gippsland region of Victoria. Registered in November 2017, the project is operated by the Latrobe City Council. The immediate site is set within over 100 hectares of blue gum and pine plantations, while the wider Latrobe Valley is well known for dairy farming, forestry operations, and heavy industrial power generation. The region experiences a temperate climate with relatively high rainfall, resulting in deep, fertile loam and clay soils.

Projects utilising the Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas methodology involve upgrading or installing a network of extraction wells to capture methane emissions from decomposing organic waste. The standard requirements of the method dictate that the captured gas must be combusted through a generator set to produce electricity, effectively destroying the highly potent methane while simultaneously supplying renewable or waste-derived power to the grid.

This specific project was established to upgrade an existing gas collection system to better capture and combust emissions generated from both legacy and non-legacy waste at the regional facility. In August 2021, the Latrobe City Council varied the project's methodology, transitioning from the 2015 Landfill Gas determination to the updated 2021 Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas determination. Additionally, the project secured a Fixed Delivery Carbon Abatement Contract with the Clean Energy Regulator in October 2020, successfully delivering 50,000 abatement units before the contract's completion in December 2025. As part of the site's broader environmental management, the council is progressively capping older landfill cells and revegetating harvested plantation boundaries with indigenous native plants to return the area to natural bushland.