What is the BERC?
The Bromelton Energy and Resource Centre (BERC) is a proposed Energy from Waste (EfW) facility being developed by Cleanaway, Australia's largest waste management company. It is proposed for Lot 1 Beaudesert Boonah Road, Bromelton, within the Queensland Government-declared Bromelton State Development Area (SDA) in the Scenic Rim local government area - a designated Special Industry Precinct for difficult-to-locate industries.
The facility is estimated to cost approximately $700M and Cleanaway has submitted their approval application to the Office of the Coordinator General in March 2026. If approved, construction would take approximately four years.
What will it do?
The BERC is a thermal EfW (waste incineration/combustion) facility. Its key claimed outputs include:
- Processing approximately 760,000 tonnes of residual waste per year (municipal residual waste and commercial/industrial waste that would otherwise go to landfill)
- Generating up to 73 megawatts of electricity - enough to power more than 105,000 Queensland homes
- Recovering approximately 16,700 tonnes of metals and 164,000 tonnes of construction aggregate annually
- Diverting around 12% of Queensland's total landfill waste
- Operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as base-load generation
Cleanaway claims the facility will result in a net greenhouse gas reduction equivalent to removing 50,000 petrol cars from the road annually, through avoided landfill methane, fossil fuel displacement, and materials recovery.
Location and Context
The site is surrounded by other heavy industry including the established Scenic Rim Regional Council Waste and Resource Recovery Facility, quarries, animal processing facilities, and manufacturing and logistics operations. The site is 62 hectares within the SDA, which is centrally located in South East Queensland with good road and rail connectivity.
Immissions Monitoring: Not a Binding Requirement
‘Immissions’ refers to the concentration of pollutants at ground level as received by people and the environment - essentially what communities actually breathe - as distinct from emissions, which are what comes out of the stack.
A critical concern raised by community members and critics of the BERC is that Cleanaway is not legally bound to report on immissions to surrounding communities or any independent authority. Here is why:
1. The governing policy is non-statutory.
The Policy provides guidance for establishing EfW facilities in Queensland and is not a statutory document. This means the Queensland EfW Policy - the primary framework guiding the BERC - carries no binding legal force in itself. It signals preferences and intentions but does not compel specific outcomes.
2. The EU BREF framework that underpins air monitoring uses conditional, not mandatory, language.
The guideline adopts the EU's Waste Incineration Best Available Techniques Reference Document (WI BREF) as the benchmark for emissions standards. However, the WI BREF describes techniques considered to have the potential for achieving a high level of environmental protection - and critically, not all techniques outlined in the BREFs are relevant to all facilities. It is recommended that proponents conduct a BAT assessment to determine which techniques in the BAT conclusions are most appropriate to their project. The decision about which monitoring techniques apply is left largely to the proponent's own assessment.
Ambient air (immissions) monitoring - measuring what communities are actually exposed to - is not explicitly mandated under Queensland law for EfW facilities. The guideline and its referenced BREF frameworks only recommend that ambient monitoring be conducted where practicable or where significant ground-level impacts are predicted from modelling. There is no blanket obligation to monitor immissions at sensitive receptors (homes, schools, farms) and no obligation to publicly report such data.
3. There is no overarching, independent monitoring body.
Queensland has no dedicated independent body established specifically to oversee EfW facilities. Regulatory oversight falls broadly under the Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI), which issues Environmental Authorities (EAs) and can investigate complaints - but does not maintain a standing monitoring program at industrial sites like the BERC. The facility, if approved, would be largely self-regulating: Cleanaway would conduct and report its own emissions data to the department, and ambient air quality monitoring in the surrounding area would depend on voluntary commitments or specific EA conditions negotiated at the time of approval.
Community Concerns and Opposition
Community groups including BOSS (Boonah Organisation for a Sustainable Shire) and Keep the Scenic Rim Scenic have organised public forums and are calling for greater scrutiny of the proposal. Concerns raised include emissions (including persistent pollutants and dioxins), ash disposal, long-term waste supply contracts that may undermine recycling, and the impact on the region's agricultural and tourism identity.
Key References
Queensland EfW Policy (released June 2020, updated December 2021): qld.gov.au/environment/waste-reduction-recycling/policy-legislation/energy-waste
Queensland EfW Guideline (ORR/2021/5875, Version 1.00, effective December 2021): PDF via Queensland Government
EU Waste Incineration BREF (WI BREF): eippcb.jrc.ec.europa.eu/reference
Cleanaway BERC project page: cleanaway.com.au/location/bromelton-energy-and-resource-centre
Beaudesert Bulletin community coverage (November 2025): beaudesertbulletin.com
Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld): the principal statutory instrument under which any Environmental Authority would be granted.
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