Kilcoy Bioenergy Cogeneration Project

Kilcoy Bioenergy Cogeneration Project is a commercial and industrial wastewater carbon project located at Winya in Kilcoy, approximately 100km northwest of Brisbane in Queensland. It was registered in June 2020. While the exact project area size is not specified, it is situated at the Kilcoy Pastoral Company’s large-scale beef processing facility.

The Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Wastewater methodology involves upgrading wastewater treatment systems to prevent the release of potent greenhouse gases. Projects of this type generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by replacing deep open anaerobic lagoons with enclosed anaerobic digesters. The captured biogas, which is primarily methane, must then be destroyed through flaring or combusted to generate energy.

The Kilcoy and wider Somerset region's land use is heavily dominated by agriculture, cattle grazing, and meat processing operations. The local environment experiences a subtropical climate with moderate to high rainfall, and the surrounding agricultural landscapes typically consist of alluvial, podzolic, and clay soils.

This specific project is installing anaerobic digesters to treat the facility's industrial abattoir wastewater. The biogas generated from this treatment process is collected and combusted using an internal combustion engine to produce cogeneration bioenergy (heat and power) for the meat processing plant. Kilcoy Pastoral Company (now operating as part of Kilcoy Global Foods) is one of Australia's largest beef processors, and this project highlights the integration of sustainable waste-to-energy practices within the red meat processing industry. Additionally, on March 28, 2025, the project varied its method to the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Wastewater) Methodology Determination 2015 (Compilation No. 3) to ensure continued compliance with the latest carbon accounting standards.