Saving the World One Landfill at a Time

Australia generated more than 75.8 mega tonnes of total waste across the 2020-21 period. Roughly 27% of that, or 20.4 mega tonnes, ended up in landfill. That’s a lot of possibilities for methane-rich gas to be combusted and collected for its energy value.

Although it is not well known, many larger landfill sites in Australia already extract methane for energy generation. One such site is called Mugga Lane in the ACT which has been doing the process for many years.

Dr Jessica North to headline at All-Energy Australia 2023

For Dr Jessica North, CEO of a company called LGI who are experts in delivering renewable energy and carbon abatement solutions, getting to this point has been a lifelong passion. Although she continues to admit she is a bit of a ‘pleb’ when it comes to energy, her lifelong motto of saving the world one landfill at a time is right on target.

Dr North will headline the Methane Matters session at All-Energy Australia 25-26 October in Melbourne. The discussion will centre around the benefits of reducing methane in industry, mining and resource extraction.

It was never going to be a choice for Dr North to avoid working in her current field. Her parents ingrained in her from an early age not to waste anything and to reuse whatever they could.

“Mum and dad separately grew up in World War II in England and then they immigrated separately to Canada, but they brought with them this sort of ingrained frugality that just lasted,” Dr North explained.

“You look after everything extremely well and if you do buy new, you buy it to last.”

Plastic waste a lightbulb moment for Dr North

After finishing High School Dr North was offered a scholarship to study in Thailand. It was there while working as a translator for trekking companies, that she was alerted by village elders to the large volumes of plastic food packaging waste that was left behind on hillsides.

“All of the trekking companies would bring in food in plastic packaging and the village elders said, ‘What do we do with this? It’s just accumulating. It’s not degrading, it’s ruining everything,” Dr North said.

“I had this sort of ‘aha’ moment and decided not to pursue my fine arts and linguistics pathway and instead returned to Canada, did a science degree and ended up in waste management and actually returned to Thailand at the end of my bachelor of science degree to work for the business arm of a Canadian NGO delivering solid waste improvement projects in Thailand. It’s now been 26 years in rubbish.”

Powering Australia with landfill

Dr North has been with LGI since 2012 and CEO since 2017. She is heavily involved in all of the projects, including the Mugga Lane project. They currently have eight landfill power stations on the Australian eastern seaboard.

“The projects that we deliver for me are this fascinating intersection of waste, carbon, and energy.

“It’s this unique confluence of three quite critical areas in terms of sustainability and environment protection. This amazing intersection where there are so many challenges but so many opportunities.”

Mugga Lane is their largest facility currently with the commissioning of 4 x 1 megawatt nameplate capacity gas engines. During the presentation at All-Energy Australia, Dr North will go through the power station processes. She will cover the process of extracting the gas, combusting it, and ending up as hydrocarbon fuel to run the gas engines on the site.

Although it only provides comparatively small amounts of power, a few megawatts, its 24/7 operation, particularly in times of high demand means it provides a base load power source.

“All of our landfill gas to power projects have particular characteristics that are really essential to aid the greater penetration of other renewable energy into the market into the grid,” Dr North explained.

“Our projects are on the distribution network, so it’s distributed, it’s dispatchable, fast response, 24/7 renewable energy.

“The key challenge that we face at the moment is the logistics of the interconnection to the grid. At Mugga Lane we have just received approval for expanding our existing interconnection, which is about four and a bit megawatts of export capacity to 20 megawatts and we have landed two additional gas engines.

“We will also be incorporating batteries as we work through the engineering interconnection piece so it will be very, very exciting.”

All-Energy Australia: Methane education

Dr North said her involvement in All-Energy Australia is vital to allow people to understand what LGI actually does and hopefully be part of the journey.

“I think that there is so little awareness of this opportunity, particularly for local governments who own and operate landfills. It has the potential to benefit both people who are working within the council at an operational level, as in managers, directors, but also councillors,” Dr North noted.

All-Energy Australia 25-26 Oct 2023 — *All-Energy Australia, 25-26 Oct 2023*

Politicians of all levels need to understand there’s an opportunity here and some of the barriers are quite bureaucratic or policy-related. So let’s work on this together to deliver these sorts of macro-environmental and energy goals that we’ve got.

“It is so essential particularly this specific talk about methane matters. At the end of the day, not all landfills are of a sufficient scale or have the logistics to export energy from a power station on the site however, there are still dozens of councils in Australia, both small to medium regional landfills that could consider this opportunity.”

Dr Jessica North will appear at All-Energy Australia on Day Two in Room 203, Thursday, October 26 starting at 1pm.

For more details on the conference, agenda, exhibitors and how to register for the free-to-attend event visit the website at all-energy.com.au.