Commodore

The Commodore open pit coal mine, located in the Surat Basin, 200 kilometres from Brisbane, began supplying coal to the 850 MW Millmerran Power Station in February 2003. It remains the only coal source supplying the power station that supplies power to over one million Queensland homes through the National Electricity Market. It employs around 50 personnel with most living in the local community.

The Commodore Mine Complements the Millmerran Power Station
Coal obtained from its own adjacent Commodore coal mine makes the Millmerran Power Station more efficient and therefore enables it to lower consumer electricity costs, it is also able to minimise any environmental impact on surrounding land that an open pit coal mine might otherwise create. The coal mining and the power station only take up a small portion of the 9,115 hectares of land surrounding the two operations. What is not used is utilised as a buffer zone that separates the mine and power generating plant from its neighbours.

Mining Contractor Downer EDI Have Statutory Responsibility for the Commodore Mine
The Commodore Mine is managed and operated by mining contracting company, Downer EDI Mining, on behalf of its majority owner Intergen. Other companies with minor interests in the Commodore Mine include; GEC, EIF, Tohoku and Franco-Nevada Corporation on a royalty basis. Downer EDI has been involved in the operation from the beginning and hold statutory responsibility for the mine site. Its responsibilities include; mine design and planning, drilling and blasting, stripping of the overburden, mining of the coal seam and rehabilitation of the mined out areas.

Commodore was the First Mine to Totally use Biodiesel Fuel
At the beginning of 1991 the Commodore coal mine had a thermal coal resource of 177 million tonnes and was mining 3.250 million tonnes a year. Its annual production capacity is regarded as being 3.6 million tonnes. Its most notable feature is that it was the first open pit coal mines in the world to dedicate its total fuel use to biodiesel fuel.

Commodore Mine - A Leader in Mining Environmental Matters
The Commodore Mine is an industry leader in environmental matters. This was officially recognised in 2011 when it won the 'Premiers ClimateSmart Sustainability Award' from the Queensland Government. The award was won on the basis of it leading the way in renewable fuel use. Besides the mine only using biodiesel fuel it also pioneered a program that independently verified fugitive methane gas emissions.

After trialling its innovative and unique energy and emissions measuring system at the Commodore Mine it has now implemented it at all its operations. This has resulted in a significantly improved and more accurate transparency of emissions reporting which has real benefits for itself as well as the broader industry. Commodore mine management didn't rest on their laurels with these two major innovations as they went on to introduce measures that would make the mine self sufficient in water usage, as well as using the ash from the power station to help return mined out areas to a near natural landform.
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