Red Hill Landfill Gas Power Station Upgrade Project

Red Hill Landfill Gas Power Station Upgrade Project is a landfill gas electricity generation project located at the Red Hill Waste Management Facility, approximately 12km northeast of Midland and 30km northeast of the Perth CBD in Western Australia. Registered in May 2021, the project operates within the EMRC (Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council) facility, which serves Perth’s eastern suburbs. The site is situated on the Darling Scarp, a region characterized by waste management operations, extractive industries (quarries), and surrounding jarrah forest and bushland.

This project operates under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Electricity Generation from Landfill Gas) Methodology Determination 2021. Landfill gas projects involve the installation of wells and piping to vacuum methane generated by decomposing organic waste. Instead of allowing this potent greenhouse gas to vent into the atmosphere or simply flaring it, the methane is combusted in gas engines to generate renewable electricity for the grid. As an "Upgrade" project, it focuses on improvements to the existing collection system, originally established in the early 1990s, to capture gas from both legacy and non-legacy waste that would otherwise have escaped the older system's baseline efficiency.

The environment of the Red Hill area on the Darling Scarp differs significantly from the sandy coastal plain of Perth. The region experiences a Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, typically receiving higher rainfall (around 800-1000mm annually) than the city below. The soil composition is dominated by the lateritic profile of the Darling Range, featuring ironstone gravels (ferricrete), duricrust, and sandy clays over granite bedrock.

An interesting aspect of this project is its longevity and operator history. While the carbon project ID is relatively new (2021), the power station itself has been operating since 1993, making it one of Western Australia's first waste-to-energy facilities. It is operated by Landfill Gas & Power Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of EDL (Energy Developments Limited). The facility has a generation capacity of approximately 4MW, utilizing the methane from millions of tonnes of waste to power thousands of local homes.