In the lead up to a National Hydrogen Strategy, the government has released issues papers for public comment.
Few Australians will have heard of Mission Innovation (MI), a global initiative dedicated to clean energy innovation. It was established following the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015, and includes Australia as one of 24 member countries that are seeking to double global public investment in clean energy RD&D.
The ambitious target is to limit global temperatures to well below 2 °C, including through supporting new technologies that have the greatest potential to reduce carbon emissions.
An area of great promise is hydrogen, reflected in the MI's eighth Innovation Challenge, which is dedicated to accelerating a global hydrogen market.
In line with this, the CSIRO and the Canadian University of British Columbia have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate in joint clean energy research and demonstration projects, including hydrogen infrastructure.
Hydrogen remains a firm focus of Australia's policy makers, on the back of a new technology developed by CSIRO that could make it feasible to ship hydrogen to global markets in the form of a liquid, ammonia.
The parallels with the export of gas in its liquid form, LNG, which has now emerged as a mega-industry in Australia, are striking.
But hydrogen is not only a versatile, but potentially also a 'clean' fuel if produced from renewable energy sources (or fossil energies in combination with carbon capture and storage). Its export could indeed pave the way for excess renewabe energy produced in Australia being delivered to customers overseas (see also our previous feature story ‘The comeback of hydrogen’.
For now potential export markets for hydrogen narrow down to mainly Japan and Korea, with Japan having committed to presenting a ‘hydrogen society’ during the 2020 Olympics.
But global analysis points to growing demand in other major global markets as well. At present hydrogen is mainly used for feedstocks. But according to the Hydrogen Council, a global consortium established by energy, transport and other firms in 2018, demand for the clean fuel could increase 10-fold by 2050 and then provide around 18% of the world’s final energy demand.
The economic potential of hydrogen for Australia is significant, and the likely indirect benefits compelling, given that the use of hydrogen could also contribute to decarbonising the national energy systems, while also improving their reliability and security.
According to an analysis by ACIL Allen, even under a more conservative scenario for global growth in demand, the direct and indirect benefits for Australia could reach $4 billion by 2040.
To establish a viable path for an emerging Australian hydrogen industry, the government is developing a National Hydrogen Strategy, for which a COAG hydrogen working group has developed nine issues papers to date. The papers are currently open for comment, and cover the following topics: