History will be made next week when Australia ships the world’s first cargo of liquid hydrogen, an event that will mark a milestone in a looming transformation of exports with one of the country’s most important partners amid the energy transition.
The project, which requires the extracted carbon to be used or buried, signals the potential emergence of a new low-carbon trade with Japan, which has been Australia’s largest buyer of emissions-heavy coal and LNG over the last several decades but which in October 2020 set a 2050 target to reach net zero emissions.
The liquefied hydrogen will be loaded into what former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel describes as “an enormous thermos flask” on the ship for the two-week journey to Kobe, in what will be the first time in the world that liquid hydrogen has been made and transported by sea to an international market. “It’s so effective that there’s hardly any heat transfer from the outside to the inside, and therefore very little hydrogen boils off during the journey, so it’s an incredible feat.”Carbon extracted during the production process needs to be either reused, or buried underground, which is intended in part of a separate but closely linked venture,
It will also only produce up to three tonnes of hydrogen over a year, from up to 160 tonnes of brown coal, with no decision likely for at least two years as to whether it will be scaled up to a commercial project., many of whom also opposed AGL’s now-abandoned Crib Point LNG import project in Westernport Bay, are worried about the impact of dredging in the bay, the introduction of marine pests, and the general industrialisation of the region as well as the climate impact.
“If we don’t move fast enough, we’re going to miss the boat, so what we need to do is produce the cleaner hydrogen and carbon-neutral hydrogen as soon as we can, otherwise Japan and South Korea will start having supply contracts with other countries.”The project, formally launched in 2018, also offers hope for employment at the Latrobe Valley brown coalfields as the local coal power stations that use the fuel face a likely early demise amid the rampant rise of cheap renewable energy.