Shoalhaven Starches Gas Turbine Co-Generation Project

Shoalhaven Starches Gas Turbine Co-Generation Project is an industrial and commercial emissions reduction project located at the Shoalhaven Starches manufacturing plant in Bomaderry, situated just north of Nowra on the New South Wales South Coast. It was registered in June 2021. As this is a facility-based industrial upgrade rather than an area-based agricultural or land-sector project, it does not cover a traditional project area in hectares. Instead, it encompasses the operating footprint of the world's largest wheat gluten and starch plant of its kind.

The methodology for Industrial and Commercial Emissions Reduction involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions by upgrading, replacing, or modifying existing energy-consuming equipment, or by changing a facility's energy sources. In this project, emissions are reduced by transitioning the facility's power supply from coal-fired boilers and grid electricity to a natural gas-fueled cogeneration system. The standard requirements for this methodology involve installing turbines and implementing fuel switching to generate electricity on-site that directly substitutes for power previously obtained from the state electricity grid.

The Bomaderry and Nowra area is positioned along the Shoalhaven River floodplain, an environment defined by a mix of urban development, industrial manufacturing, and surrounding agricultural land uses such as dairy farming and pasture grazing. The region experiences a temperate climate with relatively high rainfall, historically averaging around 800mm to 950mm annually. The local soils feature alluvial deposits along the riverbanks, while the broader regional soils are characterized by sandy loams, chromosols, and sodic clays that can occasionally present drainage limitations.

An interesting fact about this project is its transformational scale for local manufacturing. Backed by an $85 million loan from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) as part of a broader $250 million investment, the state-of-the-art cogeneration plant utilizes advanced GE Vernova aeroderivative gas turbines. This upgrade allows the Shoalhaven Starches facility to meet more than 90% of its power needs on-site and is expected to cut the plant's greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40%. This translates to a reduction of approximately 300,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually, which is the equivalent of removing 150,000 cars from the road. To support this operation, a dedicated 6-kilometer gas pipeline was specifically constructed to deliver natural gas directly to the cogeneration plant.