Regulator’s hydrogen certification scheme secures 17 projects

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Backed by the Australian federal government, the Clean Energy Regulator’s (CER) Guarantee of Origin scheme aims to align with international standards and provide confidence to trading partners in the burgeoning hydrogen industry.

CER confirmed 17 active or well-advanced hydrogen projects have signed up to help it understand how a Guarantee of Origin (GO) scheme could work for hydrogen.

Unlike the Smart Energy Council’s hydrogen certification scheme, the government-backed scheme does not focus solely on certifying green hydrogen but rather will measure and track emissions from a range of hydrogen production methods and technologies, issuing certifications based on that source data.

CER noted “practical applications” of a scheme are a critical step in the co-design process, which is presumably what the 17 projects will enable to agency to figure out. 

The trial is supported by a $9.7 million funding commitment made in this year’s federal budget.

pv magazine Australia has previously been told the scheme will work something like a ticket, which can be distributed by third parties but are validated on a single shared registry. Using such a model, the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) would issue a set of numerically identifiable certificates which could then be traced and marked within a single registry. This system would prevent double counting as well as the need to cross check contracts, and would allow for automised reporting.

Such a scheme, pv magazine has been told, would also leave room for third party involvement, similar to the way GreenPower leverages off the Regulator’s Renewable Energy Target (RET) registries.

The hope is that such a model would prevent the fragmentation of having several different verification schemes run by different bodies, which could confuse international buyers. Given that the regulator already oversees Australia’s clean energy schemes, including our extensive small and large-scale solar certificates, the body seems an obvious choice to issue hydrogen certificates also.

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