2022-02-08 Planning and Environment Committee Meeting Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                               8 FEBRUARY 2022


market such as electric mowers and street sweepers. This also includes consumption of LPG in its
facilities.
Scope 1 emissions – Refrigerants
The Climate Active standard requires refrigerants used in air conditioning and other equipment to
be reported and a default leakage factor is used to determine the emissions from operating this
equipment. As air conditioning systems are upgraded, they are replaced with equipment that
contains refrigerants with the most efficient environmentally friendly gas.
Scope 1 emissions – Landfill
The Noosa Landfill takes waste from the community. It is included in Council’s own footprint as
Council has operational control over the landfill. The emissions from the landfill are Council’s
largest source of emissions contributing 31,368 tonnes (61%). to Council’s carbon footprint.
Organic matter (food, green waste, paper etc.) decomposes in the landfill under anaerobic
conditions and produces methane. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a measure of how
much energy the emissions of 1 tonne of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to
the emissions of 1 tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2). The larger the GWP, the more that a given gas
warms the earth compared to CO2 over that time period. Methane has a GWP of 28 and hence is
28 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2.
To reduce the impact of methane, the landfill gas is captured and flared, changing the methane
into CO2, and hence reducing the GWP of the landfill gas. It is estimated that without landfill gas
capture, annual emissions from the landfill would be approximately 50,000 tonnes.
During FY 2020/21, an extra 11 vertical wells and lateral lines were installed to improve the gas
capture rate. Figure 1 shows the increase in landfill gas capture since the installation of the new
wells in April 2021. Since the installation of the wells, the average monthly gas capture has
increased by 69% compared to the monthly average before the installation of the wells.




Figure 1: Monthly gas volume (m3) captured per month. Actual quantity of landfill gas captured has
been removed from the X axis as this is provided by the contractor as commercial in confidence.

                                                                                    Page 7 of 133