Hydrogen

A hydrogen production plant in South Australia would already be profitable, analysis from Cornwall Insight Australia has found.

Province Resources has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with French giant Total Eren, which could see the two companies have equal shares in Province’s HyEnergy Zero Carbon Hydrogen project proposed in northwest Western Australia. Importantly, the ambition of the project seems to have grown significantly with the commitment of heavy hitter, Total Eren, with Province now saying it plans to install 8 GW of renewable energy capacity, far more than the 1 GW which caused a stir when it was announced earlier this year.

New research from Singapore has found that gas pipelines for the onshore transport of green hydrogen and the cables for the transport of electricity to produce it at a distant location have similar costs at a 4000 km transmission distance. For longer distances, gas pipelines were found to be cheaper than cables, although the electric lines are said to benefit from scaling up and higher utilisation. For both options, however, a currently too high hydrogen LCOE remains the biggest barrier to overcome.

Australia’s most renewable state has signed a joint funding deal with the Commonwealth Government that hypes gas production, and downplays its considerable renewable-energy benefits.

The joint feasibility study between Australia and Germany, HySupply, to determine the viability of a renewable energy-based hydrogen supply chain between the two countries, has progressed again after global firm RWE Supply & Trading and Australian-based The Hydrogen Utility signed a Memorandum of Understanding which could see green ammonia exports from South Australia to Germany’s LNG Terminal in Brunsbüttel.

Jordanian government officials have met with a delegation from Fortescue Metals Group to discuss investment opportunities in green hydrogen and ammonia, although details of the meeting remain scant.

Giant PV and wind projects are taking shape in Australia’s north, with the aim of supplying Asia with the clean energy it needs for decades to come. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is one such project, as it targets green hydrogen production at a cost of $1.50/kg. Sacha Thacker, chief strategy officer at InterContinental Energy – one of the companies trying to the get the ambitious initiative off the ground – says that while the scale of projects today boggles the mind, the coming demand is more boggling still.

A homegrown technology developed by the University of Newcastle and Southern Green Gas has seen the development of a novel green hydrogen fuel and carbon neutral green methane. The fuel was demonstrated in Hyundai’s Nexo hydrogen fuel cell SUV in Sydney.

Vattenfall, SSAB and LKAB are building a rock cavern storage facility in a coastal city in northern Sweden. The 100-cubic-meter facility will be built 30 meters below ground and will begin storing green hydrogen next year.

Mining company QEM is exploring the potential of solar PV and wind energy as part of the company’s broader ambition to produce green hydrogen on site at its Julia Creek vanadium and oil shale project in North Queensland.