Toowoomba Waste Management Centre - Landfill Gas Project - 2019

Toowoomba Waste Management Centre - Landfill Gas Project - 2019 is an electricity generation from landfill gas project located at the Toowoomba Waste Management Centre in Cranley, approximately 132km west of Brisbane in Queensland. It was registered in January 2020 and covers an unknown area.

Electricity generation from landfill gas projects involve capturing fugitive methane emissions generated by decomposing organic matter in a landfill. The captured gas is then combusted in a generator to produce renewable electricity, preventing the methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from entering the atmosphere and displacing grid electricity.

The surrounding Toowoomba and Darling Downs region is highly regarded for its extensive agricultural operations, including cattle grazing and broadacre cropping. The area experiences a humid subtropical climate with moderate to high rainfall. The region's highly fertile soils are primarily characterized by deep red basaltic clays (ferrosols) and black cracking clays (vertosols).

This project installs a new landfill gas collection system to capture and combust gas generated at the landfill from both legacy and non-legacy waste. After an initial period of flaring, the project was upgraded in 2022 to include a 1MW power station. In a Queensland first, this generator now supplies 90-100% of the electricity for the Toowoomba Regional Council's most energy-intensive asset, the Wetalla Water Reclamation Facility. Any surplus energy is fed directly into the national grid. The proponent, LGI Limited, formally took over the project from the Toowoomba Regional Council in June 2020. This circular-economy initiative not only generates Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) but also reportedly saves the local council approximately $600,000 annually in energy costs.