How Australia’s Hydrogen Strategy Plans to Use Existing Industries to Succeed

Hydrogen has appeared as part of the Australian energy conversation intermittently over the past couple of years. However, recently attention on hydrogen has been increasing due to the falling costs to produce and use hydrogen.

The recently released National Hydrogen Strategy highlights the role Australia can play as a world-leader in exporting the potentially important fuel. With the cost of making fuel cells and storing hydrogen decreasing with scale, Australia has a unique opportunity.

Opportunities exist for both green and blue hydrogen. The first process involves using renewable energy sources to create hydrogen, which would entail dedicated solar and wind farms in order to reliably carry out the process. While this will become increasingly feasible, Australia simply doesn’t have the renewable capacity to rapidly scale up an export industry at present. Ideally, blue hydrogen would be created using natural gas, the cleanest traditional fuel source; CO2 emissions would be captured and stored underground.

The report also highlights that a hydrogen export market can leverage existing Australian expertise to reach scale. One such industry is LNG. Australia has been exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) for many years and has strong existing networks and international relationships. Using these gas-specific expertise and infrastructure would be an immense boost to building hydrogen into a meaningful component of the economy.

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