Green hydrogen a ‘bright light’ for Australia

Australia could be the leader in green hydrogen exports, contributing to net zero commitments globally, according to Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners.

Quinbrook was a specialist investor that worked with many of Australia’s superannuation funds and the firm’s co-founder, David Scaysbrook, said the export capability was a “bright light” for Australia.

“The most exciting bright light in Australia isn’t renewables per se just to decarbonise the power sector, it’s more about harnessing our export capability for green hydrogen,” Scaysbrook said.

“We do buy into that piece but that’s largely because the rest of the world will need it and we can probably manufacture it more cheaply.

“We are fairly strong advocates of the overall thematic arguments of Twiggy [Forrest, Fortescue chief executive] and others that Australia’s great moment arising out of net zero is the carbon economy but that’s got everything to do with dollars and cents.

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“The Government incentives both at the state and federal level around that are meaningless.”

Scaysbrook said Australia had the ability to manufacture it at scale with a very low cost.

“By definition green hydrogen must be manufactured only with zero carbon electricity,” Scaysbrook said.

“That, as a new industry, obviously stimulates a lot of new renewable energy which is a good thing but it needs to be isolated from the rest of the electricity grid; you can’t have a single megawatt that’s coming from a coal or gas plant.

“If you look at where most of the products are, it’s very remote parts of the Western Australian coast or the North Queensland coast where there might be industry, but there’s no people.”