Kwinana Waste to Energy Plant

The Kwinana Waste to Energy Plant is a waste-to-energy power station under construction in Kwinana Beach, Western Australia. Once completed, the facility is scheduled to process in excess of 400,000 t of waste and will produce 36 MW of power. Initially scheduled to open in 2021, delays pushed the projected date out to late 2024.

Background
At the time of project approval, Australia generated 23 million tonnes of waste to landfill every year, with the state of Western Australia having the lowest waste recovery and highest waste generation rate per capita in the country. The geography of Perth, situated on a sandy coastal plain and relying heavily on groundwater as a source of potable water, meant new landfill sites were unlikely to be approved in the metropolitan region and existing ones were nearing capacity. As a consequence, the Government of Western Australia encouraged local councils to end their dependency on landfills by the year 2020 as the practice was not sustainable.

As of the time of approval, the Kwinana plant was scheduled to take up 25 percent of Perth's post-recycling waste that would otherwise be destined for landfill, 400,000 t of domestic, commercial and industrial waste.

Overview
At the start of construction in October 2018, the Kwinana Waste to Energy Plant was the first large waste-to-energy facility to be constructed in Australia. The facility is intended to take waste otherwise destined for landfill from the Cities of Armadale, Canning, Gosnells, Kwinana, Mandurah and South Perth, as well as the Shires of Murray and Serpentine-Jarrahdale. Approval of the Kwinana plant was followed by the approval of the East Rockingham Waste to Energy facility in January 2020, which is intended to take waste from the Cities of Cockburn, Belmont, Kalamunda and Swan as well as the Shire of Mundaring. A third plant in western Australia, in Port Hedland, will use a different low temperature gasification technology, something initially envisioned for the East Rockingham facility as well.

Construction of the facility will employ 800 people and cost A$668 million, while operation, carried out by Veolia, will employ 60. The construction of the facility, carried out by Acciona Construction, received A$23 million in federal funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency while a further $90 million in funding were provided by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Power generation at Kwinana will be achieved through moving grate combustion technology, whereby the burning of waste will be used to heat steam. The waste created in the process will be reused in a brick making plant which will be located at the site.

The plant is owned by Avertas Energy, which is jointly owned by Macquarie Capital and Dutch Infrastructure Fund.

In November 2022, the Supreme Court of Western Australia rejected a bid by Acciona to exit the project following a two-year delay in its completion. Acciona had asked for an extension of the contract by 824 days and additional costs in the order of A$410 million to finish the project, claiming the COVID-19 pandemic as the source of delays, something the court rejected.

In March 2024, after 12 month of negotiations, Acciona bought out its partners in the project, Macquarie Capital and the Dutch Infrastructure Fund, for A$1. The latter two had valued the equity of the project at A$275 but through the deal Acciona also acquired A$396 million of the project's debts, which was discounted to A$367.4 million. The new opening date for the facility was now scheduled for late 2024.