This is the commercialisation-stage Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the Mt Piper Energy Recovery Project.
Report extract
The Mt Piper Energy Recovery Project, partly funded by ARENA, involves construction and operation of a dedicated boiler and Refuse Derive Fuel (RDF) receival infrastructure with a nominal capacity of 200,000 tonnes per annum. The project is expected to generate approximately 240,000 MWh of electricity per annum, provide around 300 local direct and indirect jobs during 32 months of construction, and up to 16 ongoing operational roles.
Edge Environment have been engaged by Re.Group and Energy Australia to prepare a commercialisation-stage Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for the Mt Piper Energy Recovery Project. The LCA is aligned with the guidance for commercialisation LCAs from ARENA, Method and guidance for undertaking life cycle assessment (LCA) of bioenergy products and projects, as well as the ISO standards for LCA: ISO 14040:2006 and ISO14044:2006+A1:2018. In addition, this LCA has been built on previously completed the proof-of-concept LCA on the same project by Edge Environment.
The results of the LCA show that 1 MWh RDF-based power generation system performs better across all environmental impact categories assessed except ozone layer depletion, compared to an equivalent 1 MWh coal-based power generation systems. The increase in ODP is attributed mainly to the processing of MSW into RDF. The increase of ODP is in the order of 10-5 for generating 1 MWh electricity.