Kilcoy Bioenergy Boiler Project

Kilcoy Bioenergy Boiler Project is an industrial energy efficiency and fuel switching project located at the Kilcoy Global Foods beef processing facility, approximately 2km east of the township of Kilcoy in Southeast Queensland. The project was registered on March 11, 2022. Rather than a broad land tract, the project footprint covers an industrial facility; however, the surrounding environment sits within the Somerset Region, which is well-known for high-rainfall grazing pastures. The regional landscape is supported by fertile alluvial and clay soils that underpin the local cattle farming industry.

Industrial and Commercial Emissions Reduction (ICER) projects focus on reducing emissions tied to commercial energy consumption. This is typically achieved by upgrading inefficient energy-consuming equipment, capturing waste heat, or switching out fossil fuels for lower-emission energy sources. Under this methodology, proponents are required to calculate the difference in emissions between the new system and the "baseline" emissions that would have occurred had they continued using fossil fuels.

The core activities of this project involve replacing an outdated 8MW coal-fired boiler with a high-efficiency 15MW biomass boiler system. By transitioning away from coal to renewable biofuels, specifically organic materials such as plant waste and animal by-products, the facility effectively eliminates its reliance on coal for steam generation and dramatically improves overall energy efficiency.

Interestingly, this boiler upgrade forms a major pillar of Kilcoy Global Foods' broader corporate sustainability strategy. Alongside a separate biogas cogeneration project, the new biomass boiler helped the facility achieve certified Carbon Neutral status under the Climate Active standard, which is reportedly a first for a large-scale beef processor in Australia. The switch from coal to biofuel alone is projected to reduce the facility's emissions by approximately 14,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. The project also noted a variation of its methodology in December 2023, migrating from the older 2015 Industrial Electricity and Fuel Efficiency determination to the updated 2021 ICER methodology to continue generating ACCUs.