Solar Power Helps Logan City Council Hit Carbon Neutrality

Queensland’s Logan City Council has joined a still-exclusive club, receiving carbon neutral certification under the Australian Government’s Climate Active initiative.

The Logan City local government area (LGA) is a bustling place; home to more than 350,740 people living in locations including Beenleigh, Browns Plain and Jimboomba. It’s one of the fastest growing population centres in Queensland.

With so many people to serve, reining in emissions was a significant challenge for Council; one it has risen to. As part of its efforts on this front the organisation placed a special focus on electricity use and landfill gas, which were two of its largest emission sources. And addressing the latter helped with the former.

In addition to a bunch of solar power systems installed on various assets including libraries, sports centres and water facilities, Council also captured more than 4 million cubic metres of gas from organic waste in 2021-22 that was then used to generate electricity.

Mayor Darren Power is very proud of Council’s achievements.

“We have had our eye on this important target for four years and it is fantastic to have reached our goal,” Cr Power said. “Council takes climate change very seriously and is committed to protecting the environment for future generations to enjoy.”

The Climate Active initiative says its carbon neutral certification is one of the most rigorous in the world. It has issued more than 570 certifications and over 33 million tonnes of carbon offsets have been accounted for under the program. In terms of local governments, just 15 have been Climate Active certified to date, including Logan City.

Mayor Power said the certification isn’t the end of the organisation’s efforts to lighten its impact on the environment.

“Council is already investigating new methods to even further reduce our emissions in coming years,” he stated.

You can read more about Logan City Council’s various sustainability initiatives here.

Logan City Powers Ahead On PV

Council has continued to rack up more solar panels in the last few years. When we last checked back in 2020, the organisation had more than 1MW of solar capacity installed. There’s now more than 2MW and the biggest installation by far is a system at Loganholme Wastewater Treatment Plant (pictured above), which is 1.1MW (AC) – and that is to be further expanded to a total 4MW capacity.

Among other significant systems are:

• Council Administration Centre (200kW)
• Logan North Aquatic Centre (100kW)
• Marsden Depot (100kW)
• Beenleigh Library (100kW)
• Logan North Library (82kW)
• Mt Warren Sports Centre (70kW)
• Marsden Library (55kW)
• Browns Plains Recycling Centre (30kW)

According to Logan City Council, its solar energy assets generated a record 2.6 gigawatt-hours in 2021-22. That’s equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of around 472 Queensland households.

And speaking of households, the Logan City LGA community have also given installing solar panels a red-hot go. The Australian Photovoltaic Institute (APVI) estimates 383.4MW of capacity had been installed in the region up to the end of September last year, with around 258MW of that total comprised of systems under 10kW capacity.