Councils under pressure to cap landfill emissions
Local governments around Australia are racing to have their landfill sites comply with the new carbon pricing scheme, which begins on July 1.
Representatives from more than 100 municipalities and shires have been meeting in Canberra today to discuss how to reduce their carbon footprint.
The Local Government Association says councils with large methane-emitting landfills will have to capture the gases or pass the cost of the carbon tax onto ratepayers.
Operating a rubbish tip or landfill site is one of the biggest greenhouse gas-emitting problems local governments face, and it will be an even bigger problem now a carbon price has been set.
Local Government Association vice president Felicity Anne Lewis says 300 sites across Australia need to have their emissions addressed and none will receive Federal Government compensation.
"Clearly for councils, the challenge is how we can reduce those emissions so that we can mitigate the costs, because ultimately it will be the ratepayer who will be paying that," she said.
"We're looking to be creative, to looking at councils that have already had a bit of an experience in this field to look at how they actually mitigated their carbon emissions and tried to get them under that 25,000-tonne threshold and what the opportunities are. So turn a challenge into an opportunity I guess."
Some councils, like Tweed Shire in northern New South Wales, are being held up as examples to follow.
In 2002 it installed gas capture on its landfill site and in 2006 a contractor began burning the gas for electricity.
The Tweed Shire's director for community and natural resources, David Oxenham, says it produces on average about 3,000 megawatt hours a year.
"That amount of power, the power produced from this plant, would power in the order of about 400 homes," he said.
"It's sold back into the grid by the contractor who operates that power-generation plant.
"In terms of the financial arrangements, all of those financial benefits go towards the contractor. The benefit the council gets obviously is that our emissions, our carbon emissions, are significantly reduced at that landfill site."
In other words, when the new laws come in in July 1, the Tweed landfill site will not have to pay for any liabilities.
"Because of this scheme, we are the under the 25-kilotonne threshold, and therefore the carbon tax does not apply to our landfill site," Mr Oxenham said.
Mr Oxenham says he suspects "a lot" of councils are in a similar position to reducer their emissions.
"There's potentially 120 landfill operators that are affected," he said.
"Now some will be able to get under the threshold by installing a gas-abatement scheme, but others may not. So I suspect at least, or a large number of that 120 will be able to certainly minimise their tax obligations."
The Local Government Association says methane capture is just one solution.
It says it will also continue to educate ratepayers to reduce the amount of rubbish they create in the first place.