Strategic Alliances

The Suiso Frontier cargo vessel docked at Victoria’s Port of Hastings on Friday to take on the world’s first shipment of liquid hydrogen. The ship’s arrival is a landmark for the Japanese-Australian Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain pilot project, which sees liquefied hydrogen generated from brown coal, and an engineering milestone in itself. But while the Australian government describes the product as “clean”, experts maintain that carbon capture and storage technology has proven only to be an expensive failure.

Electric vehicle giant Tesla has inked an offtake deal with Australian miner Syrah Resources to supply battery-ready graphite as concerns over raw materials shortages continue.

Fortescue Future Industries has taken another step toward its global green hydrogen ambitions with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Germany polymer company Covestro for the equivalent of 100,000 tonnes of solar-sourced green hydrogen and its derivatives annually, starting as early as 2024.

Japanese trading house Sojitz Corporation has announced it will collaborate with Queensland government-owned utility CS Energy and Nippon Engineering Consultants on a project to transport green hydrogen produced in Australia to the Pacific Island nation of Palau in a bid to reduce a reliance on fossil fuels.

Vehicle manufacturer Foton and gas company BOC have signed an agreement to develop the hydrogen bus sector in Australia and New Zealand, allowing technology they say is already “widely used” around the world to become affordable in a region where it is still nascent.

The investment is planned to support development and construction of Hydrostor’s 1.1GW, 8.7GWh of Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage projects that are well underway in California and Australia, and help expand Hydrostor’s project development pipeline globally.

The completed acquisition of ClipperCreek launches Enphase Energy into the fast-growing market for electric vehicle charging systems.

Korea Zinc, non-ferrous metal smelting company, has agreed to invest $50 million in Energy Vault, a Switzerland-based gravity storage specialist, in order to use its tech to decarbonise its refining and smelting operations in Australia.

Following approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board in November, the long-awaited sale of grid-operator Spark Infrastructure to a North American consortium led by private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has been completed via a $5.2 billion “all-cash transaction”.

Netherlands-based renewables developer Photon Energy has reaffirmed its commitment to Australian tech company RayGen Resources’ innovative ‘solar-hydro’ technology, offloading its majority stake in the 160 MWdc Maryvale Solar Farm so it can focus its future development activities in Australia on large-scale projects featuring the solar-plus-storage technology.