Australia is aiming to become a major global exporter of hydrogen fuel, but critics fear its new strategy will prop up the fossil fuel industry and lock out green energy sources.
The country鈥檚 energy ministers recently announced around 拢200 million in funding and a suite of recommendations aimed at launching the industry so it is ready to capitalise on demand for hydrogen in Asia and Europe that looks set to grow over the next decade.
But efforts to ensure that hydrogen production would be primarily from renewable energy sources have been blocked, with federal energy minister Angus Taylor declaring the plans to be 鈥渢echnology-neutral鈥�.
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Hydrogen doesn鈥檛 emit carbon dioxide when burnt, and when it is produced using renewable energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the overall emissions are low. But extracting it from natural gas or coal does emit carbon dioxide.
Producing hydrogen from renewables, known as green hydrogen, is predicted to become as cheap as other methods within the next decade. But without specific policies to favour renewables, cheaper fossil fuels will have the advantage in the meantime, says Richie Merzian, spokesperson for the think tank The Australia Institute.
Infrastructure designed for fossil fuels won鈥檛 necessarily help green hydrogen, says Merzian. For instance, green hydrogen plants need to be located near water sources, whereas fossil fuel hydrogen plants need to be close to the source of fossil fuels.
鈥淭here is a real risk that the national hydrogen strategy will lock in fossil fuel-based hydrogen, which will squander an opportunity for a renewable hydrogen industry,鈥� says Merzian.
Fiona Beck at the Australian National University in Canberra says that allowing fossil fuels into this space could advance the field more rapidly than if it was limited to renewables. Converting fossil fuels into hydrogen and capturing the carbon dioxide would also, in principle, be a way of reducing the carbon emissions of those types of fuels, she says.
The strategy recommends that plants using fossil fuels would need to adopt carbon capture and storage. It says capture rates of 90 per cent or more will be needed to bring emissions down to 鈥渁cceptably low levels鈥�.
Beck says 90 per cent is an 鈥渆xtremely high鈥� target. There are only two hydrogen production plants that have carbon capture and storage, and the most effective one only captures 80 per cent of the carbon.
鈥淚 have not yet seen evidence we can do this in Australia or around the world,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat worries me, because if we start pursuing coal or liquid natural gas hydrogen production and it takes 10 years for carbon capture and storage to catch up, that is a lot of carbon dioxide emissions.鈥�
