Kilcoy Bioenergy Cogeneration Project

Kilcoy Bioenergy Cogeneration Project is an industrial wastewater bioenergy project located at Kilcoy, approximately 100km northwest of Brisbane in the Somerset region of Queensland. Registered in June 2020, the project covers an unknown specific area but operates directly on-site at the large-scale Kilcoy Global Foods meat processing facility. The surrounding Somerset region is heavily agricultural, known primarily for pastoral farming and beef cattle grazing. The local environment typically experiences moderate to high subtropical rainfall, with landscapes featuring a mix of soils including Dermosols, Kandosols, and fertile alluvial soils along the creek flats.

Operating under the Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Wastewater Methodology, the project focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from organic effluent. Standard requirements for this methodology involve treating wastewater in closed systems to capture the resulting methane, which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, and destroying it via combustion to prevent its global warming impact. For this project, Kilcoy Pastoral Company replaced their deep, open anaerobic lagoons with highly controlled, covered anaerobic digesters. The biogas produced from the industrial wastewater is collected, treated through biological desulphurisation scrubbers, and then combusted using internal combustion engines.

This project is a cornerstone of the facility's sustainability infrastructure, featuring three Combined Heat and Power (CHP) engines capable of generating 4 megawatts of electricity onsite. This setup allows the processing plant to significantly reduce its reliance on the grid, producing renewable heat and electricity equivalent to the usage of about 4,000 households per year. Largely due to these bioenergy initiatives, Kilcoy Global Foods became the first large-scale export beef plant in Australia to achieve Climate Active Carbon Neutral certification. The impressive system also earned the operation the 'Outstanding Renewable Gas Project' at the 2025 Australian Renewable Heat Awards.