Published: 3 September 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
But if hydrogen is to secure a spot at the top of the world’s decarbonisation agenda, buyers and users will want assurance it’s a truly green energy, says Australia’s Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.
Hydrogen, Dr Finkel says, can do many of the things we turn to natural gas and petrol for, such as heating homes and buildings, and powering vehicles. Like natural gas, when it is liquefied it can be shipped around the world. But unlike natural gas and petrol, when burned it emits no CO2. The only by-products are water vapour and heat.
In a report he hopes to deliver to state and federal governments by year’s end, Dr Finkel will recommend Australia adopt what he calls “traceable certificates of origin” for every kilogram of hydrogen the country produces and exports.
“The purchaser can know what country it came from, what technology was used, how much CO2 was emitted [during its production],” Dr Finkel says, speaking to The Jewish Independent ahead of an address to Sydney’s Emanuel Synagogue this coming Sunday about the future of energy.
Hydrogen is produced by splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis. That process can be powered by solar, wind or hydro electricity, or fossil fuels.
“You really want to be in it from the beginning because the early adopters will get the skills, and the economies of scale … to enable them to be the lowest-cost providers.”
Australia has plenty of land, sunshine and wind to derive hydrogen by electrolysis at industrial scale but new solar and wind generators would have to be built to support a large export industry. If fossil fuels are used, their climate-damaging emissions must be captured and stored permanently underground – an expensive option that is still in the demonstration stage.
Certificates of origin could play a key role in securing Australia’s position in the multi-billion-dollar hydrogen export market. If hydrogen is produced using renewable energy, Australia could literally “ship sunshine” to energy-intensive economies such as Japan and South Korea, helping them cut their greenhouse gas emissions. If fossil fuels are used, carbon capture and storage would come into play, Dr Finkel argues.
Either way, with that traceable information, importers can decide whether or not they want to buy Australian hydrogen. “It is their decision,” he says.
The Chief Scientist has been spruiking the benefits of hydrogen since December, when the COAG Energy Council agreed to develop a national hydrogen strategy and appointed him chair of the Hydrogen Strategy Group.
With an extensive science background as an engineer, entrepreneur, neuroscientist and educator, Dr Finkel is well placed to head the team. It’s also not the first time he has prepared major energy reports for the Commonwealth.
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Cynics would say – and there are plenty of them among environmentalists and supporters of renewable energy – that his prior experience with government should be a warning that Australia’s politicians nearly always have their own agendas when it comes to energy policy and the climate crisis.
Over the past decade, the country’s energy policy has been one long list of short-lived initiatives, including the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Gillard government's carbon tax, the Abbott Coalition's Emissions Reduction Fund, and proposals for an Emissions Intensity Scheme.
In 2017, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull commissioned Dr Finkel to review the national electricity market. The Finkel Review, as it became known, outlined an orderly transition to a cleaner energy market, including the establishment of a clean energy target. Environment groups and The Greens said the target was too weak; some Coalition MPs said it was too ambitious.
Under attack from conservative and climate sceptic elements in the Coalition, Turnbull dumped the target, replacing it with a National Energy Guarantee to deal with rising energy prices. But even that policy didn’t make it past his successor, Scott Morrison, who famously brandished a lump of coal in Parliament, telling people not to fear it.
Should we worry that the development of an Australian hydrogen industry will be used as cover for the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual?
The Chief Scientist knows there are people who won’t like the idea of using coal to make hydrogen but he insists it is up to individual countries to decide whether they care about the technology used to produce the hydrogen.
“If you don’t do hydrogen production properly, then of course there is a problem,” Dr Finkel says. “You can make really dirty hydrogen through electrolysis if you use coal-fired electricity … but if you capture the carbon dioxide then you are making hydrogen with essentially no, or very little, CO2 emissions. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” he says.
The Chief Scientist knows there are people who won’t like the idea of using coal to make hydrogen but he insists it is up to individual countries to decide whether they care about the technology used to produce the hydrogen.
“I would put to you the only thing that matters are the emissions of CO2 during the manufacturing process. We should all be technology neutral.”
Is the enthusiasm for hydrogen being shown by state, territory and federal governments more about exports and jobs than anything to do with tackling the climate crisis?
“There are nine governments that unanimously invited me to lead the development of a national hydrogen strategy,” says Dr Finkel. “They have different but overlapping reasons. Exports, jobs and the reduction of our domestic [greenhouse gas] emissions are all in the mix.”
However, he acknowledges that the environmental benefits of using hydrogen don’t deliver a financial benefit because “as you know, the country has decided not to put a cost on the environmental impact” of carbon.
So, how quickly can Australia develop a viable hydrogen industry? “There is already small-scale hydrogen electricity in Australia, and we would like to grow that,” Dr Finkel says. “We don’t want to oversell the immediacy of the prospects here. It could take 10, 15, 20 years for domestic and worldwide demand to become significant.”
But he says Australia has to act now to gain any early-mover advantage. “You really want to be in it from the beginning because the early adopters will get the skills, and the economies of scale … to enable them to be the lowest-cost providers.”
Dr Alan Finkel will speak on the Future of Energy at 5pm on Sunday, September 8, at the Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney. Details and bookings here
