Strategic Alliances

Aviation H2 today it announced it has appointed a team of engineers to fast-track its ambitions of building Australia’s first hydrogen-fuelled aeroplane. The company is, however, rather enigmatic, without a website and wholly owned by Liberty Energy Capital, which itself falls into rabbit hole of ownerships. The plan comes on the same day one of Australia’s biggest renewable hydrogen players, Fortescue Future Industries, announced it’s joined forced with Los Angeles-based Universal Hydrogen to enter the aviation space.

Brett Redman, the former CEO of Australian energy utility AGL has been named as the new chief executive officer at electricity network operator Transgrid.

In the coming weeks, Western Australian mining-cum-materials recovery company Neometals will begin testing at its newly commissioned battery recycling demonstration plant in Hichenbach, Germany, the product of a joint venture with SMS Group. The Primobius facility, as it’s named, has already garnered considerable attention and is a finalist in 2022’s prestigious German Sustainability Award. “We want Primobius to be the preeminent recycler in the world,” the company’s managing director, Chris Reed, told pv magazine Australia.

Australian natural gas and electricity company, APA Group, is set to build a 88 MW solar farm at Mica Creek in Mount Isa, central Queensland. The news just as APA was confirmed to have lost its bidding war for Victorian transmission network AusNet.

It may just be an MOU, and there are no timeframes attached, but the agreement between two major emitters to continue and prioritise their development of green-processes for producing steel from iron ore bodes well for Australian manufacturing strength and marketability.

A number of Australian battery material recovery projects got off the ground this week, including the completion of Western Australian outfit Neometal’s battery recycling demonstration plant, a Queensland-Japanese joint venture studying the extraction of cobalt from copper tailings as well as the funding of Sydney-based startup Novalith.

Hydrogen vehicle maker H2X has today announced a deal with Gippsland Circular Economy Precinct which will see the pair manufacture a range of hydrogen-focussed products in Victoria’s Gippsland region. The move comes less than a week after Pure Hydrogen bought a significant stake in H2X Global.

Australian clean energy investment firm Providence Asset Group will roll out hydrogen-lithium battery technology at its solar farms after partnering with the Commonwealth Bank to fund a portfolio of 10 community-based solar plants in regional Victoria as part of the group’s larger ambitions to develop up to 40 ~5 MW solar farms across the eastern states.

Singapore-based Sun Cable has unveiled a powerhouse line-up of international engineering and advisory companies to help it deliver the world’s biggest solar PV and battery energy storage project being developed in Australia’s remote far north.

Belgian materials company Umicore has signed a contract with Australia headquartered Vulcan Energy Resources to purchase up to 42,000 tons of lithium hydroxide over a five year period beginning in 2025. The material will be used in Umicore’s production of cathode materials for lithium-ion cell manufacturers.