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Project overview
  • Lead Organisation

    Tribe Infrastructure, New Energy Corporation, HZI

    Location

    Perth, Western Australia

    ARENA Program

    Advancing Renewables Program

  • Start date

    23 August 2019

    End date

    30 December 2026

  • Project Partners
    Acciona, Suez

Summary

The East Rockingham Waste to Energy project will process up to 330,000 tonnes of residual waste per annum and recover energy to produce 28.9 MW of power.

Need

The East Rockingham Waste to Energy project addresses two major challenges facing Australia; delivering sustainable and affordable solutions for both electricity generation and waste management.

Australia disposes over 23 million tonnes of waste to landfill every year, with Western Australia having the highest waste generation rate per capita coupled with the lowest recovery rate.

There are significant environmental costs to land, air and water associated with landfilling. For example, Perth is built on a sandy coastal plain that relies heavily on groundwater as its primary source of potable water. As readily accessible landfill sites reach capacity, and with no new metropolitan landfill sites likely to be approved, it is imperative to adopt other solutions to improve waste diversion rates.

Action

Developed by New Energy Corporation, Hitachi Zosen Inova Australia (HZI) and Tribe Infrastructure Group (Tribe), the project will be the second large-scale Energy from Waste (EfW) facility in Australia. It will process up to 300,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of residual waste and 30,000 tpa of bio-solids from the Perth metropolitan area. It will also produce around 70,000 tpa of bottom ash (BA) and 12,000 tpa of flue gas treatment residuals. The BA will be further processed to recover metals and produce an aggregate product that can be used in road bases and other construction materials applications. This will achieve a 96 per cent diversion from landfill.

The East Rockingham Waste to Energy project will export 28.9 MW of electricity to the grid of which over 50 per cent of the power is deemed to be renewable.

Outcome

The project aims to achieve the following outcomes:

  • contribute to reducing the price of renewable energy
  • provide continuous renewable electricity that supports grid stability
  • demonstrate the use of treated bottom ash supporting grid stability
  • demonstrate the use of treated bottom ash replacing virgin materials
  • demonstrate world leading innovative large scale EfW aspects, including pathway to achieving bankability
  • improve technology readiness and deployment of EfW projects
  • increase the skills, capacity and knowledge relevant to renewable energy technologies.

Additional impact

Environmental

  • Reduction of 9.7m tonnes of GHG over 30 years
  • Diversion of 288,000 tonnes of waste per year from landfill
  • Development of new aggregate product replacing virgin materials

Community

  • 50 permanent jobs
  • 300 jobs during construction
  • Strong focus on engagement and education.

Read more about Bioenergy/Energy from waste projects.

Last updated 29 March 2023

ARENAWIRE Blogs

Second waste-to-energy plant gets green light

A new Western Australian waste-to-energy facility will produce electricity from non-recyclable waste that would otherwise be sent to landfill.

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