Australia’s Cleanaway, LMS to produce landfill gas

Spanish Market: Electricity, Emissions, Natural gas
20/12/24

Australian waste management operator Cleanaway and bioenergy firm LMS Energy will partner on a 22MW landfill gas-fired power station at Cleanaway's Lucas Heights facility near the city of Sydney.

Cleanaway, Australia's largest publicly listed waste management firm, will receive exclusive rights to landfill gas produced at Lucas Heights for 20 years, the company said on 20 December.

LMS will invest A$46mn ($29mn) in new bioelectricity assets, including a 22MW generator. Tightening gas markets owing to underinvestment in new supply has led to speculation that more waste-to-energy plants could be brought on line in coming years, especially in the southern regions.

Landfill gas projects receive Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by avoiding methane releases, with the total ACCU quantity calculated after a default baseline of 30pc is deducted for projects beginning after 2015. A total of 42.6mn ACCUs were issued to landfill gas projects since the start of the ACCU scheme in 2011, 27pc of the total 155.7mn and the second-largest volume after human-induced regeneration (HIR) methods at 46.68mn.

Canberra is reviewing ACCU issuance for these projects, and wants most projects to directly measure methane levels in captured landfill gas to avoid overestimation.

Landfill gas operations which generate electricity from the captured gases can also receive large-scale generation certificates (LGCs).

LMS has 70 projects currently registered at the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) and has received 24.57mn ACCUs since the start of the scheme. This is the largest volume for any single project proponent, just ahead of Australian environmental market investor GreenCollar's subsidiary Terra Carbon with 23.57mn units. Cleanaway received almost 1mn ACCUs from two projects and has four other projects that have yet to earn ACCUs.

By Tom Major and Juan Weik

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