JBS Beef City Biogas to Boiler Fuel Substitution

JBS Beef City Biogas to Boiler Fuel Substitution is an industrial emissions reduction project located at Purrawunda, approximately 35km west of Toowoomba in the Darling Downs region of Queensland. Registered in January 2022, the project is situated at the JBS Beef City facility, which is notable for being one of only two integrated feedlot and processing plants in Australia. The facility sits within a region renowned for intensive agriculture, specifically grain growing and cattle grazing, supported by the area's famous fertile black vertosol (clay) soils and sub-tropical climate.

This project operates under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative, Industrial and Commercial Emissions Reduction) Methodology Determination 2021. This methodology credits activities that reduce emissions from commercial and industrial processes, such as upgrading equipment or switching to lower-emission fuel sources. Specifically, this project involves covering anaerobic wastewater lagoons to capture naturally occurring biogas (methane). This captured biogas is then treated and used as a fuel source for the facility's boilers, displacing the need for fossil-based natural gas and preventing methane from venting into the atmosphere.

The project is a collaboration involving JBS Australia, Northmore Gordon Environmental, and AGL. Recent corporate reports indicate the system creates a "circular" wastewater process capable of reducing the site's carbon footprint by approximately 34,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent annually. The Beef City facility itself has a feedlot capacity of over 26,000 head and celebrated its 50th year of operation in 2024.