Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the word on everyone’s lips as the Federal Government champions hubs of no particular colour. Seasoned clean players such as Energy Estate are identifying greenfield opportunities for renewable energy and industry to meet.

Thinking backwards from demand for green hydrogen, the Smart Energy Council identified that investors and customers will have to be able to trust the integrity of the product. Its world-first verification scheme, launched in late 2020 is gaining international traction.

Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels will not be able to move forward fast enough to replace fossil fuels and tackle climate change, according to a German-Swiss research team that claims direct electrification alternatives are cheaper and easier to implement. The scientists cite too-high prices, short-term scarcity and long-term uncertainty, as the main reasons for their skepticism, which has caused a stir in academic circles.

The University of New South Wales’s Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, who heads the Hydrogen Energy Research Centre, has launched H2Potential, a hydrogen advisory firm that seeks to incubate and accelerate some of the world’s most promising hydrogen companies as well as advising prominent companies and industry how to join the hydrogen revolution.

Third-generation Wimmera-Mallee farmer Thomas Blair is expanding his fellow farmers’ horizons to cultivate green hydrogen.

The regions where the desert meets the sea have long been thought the most desolate and unproductive areas of the world, fruitful solely for those clever cultures who call them home. However, in the 21st century, that fiscal notion is turning on its head, and turning as rapidly as a wind turbine in a tornado, making harsh regions like Western Australia a verified paradise.

It has been said that it is no use crying over spilt milk, and similarly there is no use crying over emissions already spilt by the dairy industry, there is only to curb those emissions and Deakin University’s Hycel Technology Hub is looking to do that for the dairy industries in both Australia and Uruguay.

Three commercial-scale hydrogen projects have been conditionally approved for $103.3 million in funding from the government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency, including Western Australian green ammonia project from Engie, as well two hydrogen + gas blend projects from ATCO and Australian Gas Networks respectively.

A clean energy investment firm based in Canada but already with a growing portfolio in Australia has set out an expansion plan in excess of $2 billion and 1.3 GW for the creation of a Renewable Energy Hub of South Australia, including at least three massive solar projects, two of which would supply South Australia’s green hydrogen ambitions.

First Solar and Nel Hydrogen Electrolyser AS have announced they will collaborate to develop power plant control and other supervisory systems as part of a broader plan to build integrated photovoltaic-hydrogen power plants.