The world’s largest coal port has announced it will now be powered entirely by renewable energy.
The announcement from Port of Newcastle comes as coal power generation in Australia’s national electricity market fell to its lowest level in the final three months of 2021.
Though the port continues to export an average of 165Mt of coal a year, the move is part of a plan to decarbonise the business by 2040, and to increase the non-coal portion of its business so that coal only makes up half its revenue by 2030.
It has signed a deal with Iberdrola, which operates the Bodangora windfarm near Dubbo in inland New South Wales, for a retail power purchase agreement that provides the port with large scale generation certificates linked to the windfarm.
Chief executive officer Craig Carmody said the Port of Newcastle’s title as the largest coal port in the world “isn’t as wonderful as it used to be” and that change was necessary to avoid what happened in Newcastle and the steel industry closed.
“I would prefer to be doing this now while we have control over our destiny, while we have revenue coming in, than in a crisis situation where our revenue has collapsed and no one will lend us money,” Carmody said.
“We get 84 cents a tonne for coal shipped through our port. We get between $6 and $8 for every other product. You can see where I’d rather have my money.”
As part of its transition the port has converted 97% of its vehicles to electric and engaged in other infrastructure projects to decarbonise its operations.
Andrew Stock, climate councillor and retired energy executive who was a founding board member of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, welcomed the development but said there was a “still long way to go”.
“It’s a good thing they’re looking at it, but 50% income diversification by 2030, it’s still a decade away. That’s still a lot of coal that’s going to go through that port particularly when the IEA and the IPCC have made it clear we have to move,” Stock said.
“And 50% by 2030 is still 50% coal income.”
Stock said governments should encourage a “rapid advance in the uptake of renewables” similar to what has occurred in South Australia, which is powered by 100% renewable energy on some days.
Carmody said that as an “open access port” the business was unable to refuse traffic except under specific circumstances, but he hoped showing the company was embracing change would encourage its workforce and others to do the same.
“In some ways it doesn’t matter what the policies of government are, equities and debt markets, they’re making the decision for us,” Carmody says. “It doesn’t matter what the policy settings are in Australia, it’s what some investor in New York or Tokyo is thinking.”
“We don’t really have a choice. Nobody wants to invest in [being part of the fossil fuel supply chain].”
The announcement comes as figures from Dylan McConnell, research fellow the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College, shows renewable energy provided nearly a third of all electricity produced in the national electricity market (NEM).
In the last three months of 2021, coal’s share of the electricity grid fell 5.9% when compared to the same period in 2020, while gas recorded its lowest quarter of generation since 2004
Over the same period, rooftop solar grew 24% and utility solar by 26% – though wind’s share only grew by a “quite modest” 6.4% compared to previous years. This was partly due to poor wind conditions and a lack of new capacity.
“At the high level, solar is squeezing out coal, particularly black coal,” McConnell said. “You can see it quite clearly in the shape of what’s happened to the profile of generation.”
McConnell said that Victoria and South Australia recorded average negative power prices in the middle for the entire quarter.
“It’s a sign of the time that we’re getting negative prices on average,” McConnell said. “Coal’s being hollowed out in the middle of the day and that’s also what’s affecting their bottom line as well, as that’s when you’re having negative prices quite consistently.”
At this moment in time, Australia has no offshore wind farms.
Floating offshore wind turbines are different to bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines that are rooted to the seabed. One advantage of floating turbines is that they can be installed in deeper waters compared to bottom-fixed ones.
The Global Wind Energy Council estimates that over 235 GW of offshore wind capacity will be installed across the next decade.
Plans for three major offshore wind developments in Australia have been announced, with two of them set to incorporate floating wind technology.
In a statement Wednesday, Madrid-headquartered BlueFloat Energy said it was looking to develop the projects with advisory firm Energy Estate, which has a presence in the Australian cities of Sydney, Canberra and Adelaide.
The proposed facilities are the 1.4 gigawatt Hunter Coast Offshore Wind Project, which would be in waters off Newcastle, New South Wales; the Wollongong Offshore Wind Project, set to have a capacity of 1.6 GW and be spread across two sites off Wollongong, New South Wales; and the 1.3 GW Greater Gippsland Offshore Wind Project, planned for waters off Victoria’s Gippsland region.
According to BlueFloat Energy, the Hunter Coast and Wollongong projects will utilize floating wind technology. The Greater Gippsland wind farm will be a bottom-fixed development.
“Offshore wind energy is booming globally and now it is Australia’s time,” Carlos Martin, BlueFloat Energy’s CEO, said in a statement.
“We are excited by the prospect of introducing the two types of offshore wind technology … into Australia, as this will enable us to harness some of the best offshore wind resources globally.”
It comes after a report from the Global Wind Energy Council revealed that 6.1 GW of offshore wind capacity was installed in 2020, a small decrease compared to 6.24 GW in 2019.
The GWEC’s report, published earlier this year, forecasts that over 235 GW of offshore wind capacity is set to be installed across the next decade, however, with overall capacity hitting 270 GW by the year 2030.
Australia currently has no offshore wind farms. Toward the end of November its parliament endorsed laws which authorities said would “support the development of Australia’s offshore energy industry and deliver new jobs and investment in offshore windfarms and transmission projects.”
In a statement at the time, Angus Taylor, Australia’s minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction, said the legislation would “accelerate a number of key projects already under development.”
These include Star of the South, another offshore wind farm that’s been proposed for waters off the coast of Gippsland. Those behind the project say if Star of the South is “developed to its full potential” the facility will power roughly 1.2 million homes in the state of Victoria.
Over the past few years, a number of firms have become involved with floating offshore wind projects.
Back in 2017 Norway’s Equinor opened Hywind Scotland, a 30 megawatt facility it calls “the first full-scale floating offshore wind farm.”
Then in September 2021, another Norwegian company, Statkraft, said that a long-term purchasing agreement related to a floating offshore wind farm dubbed “the world’s largest” had started.
Elsewhere, RWE Renewables and Kansai Electric Power announced in August that they had signed an agreement that will see them look into the “feasibility of a large-scale floating offshore wind project” in waters off Japan’s coast.
Floating offshore wind turbines are different to bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines that are rooted to the seabed. One advantage of floating turbines is that they can be installed in deeper waters compared to bottom-fixed ones.
RWE has described floating turbines as being “deployed on top of floating structures that are secured to the seabed with mooring lines and anchors.”
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been touted, again and again, as one of the critical technologies that could help Australia reach its climate targets, and features heavily in the federal government’s plan for net-zero emissions by 2050.
CCS is generally when emissions are captured at the source, such as from a coal-fired power station, trucked to a remote location and stored underground.
But critics say investing in CCS means betting on technology that’s not yet proven to work at scale. Indeed, technology-wise, the design of effective carbon-capturing materials, both solid and liquid, has historically been a challenging task.
So could it ever be a viable solution to the fossil fuel industry’s carbon dioxide emissions?
Emerging overseas research shows “liquid marbles”—tiny droplets coated with nanoparticles—could possibly address current challenges in materials used to capture carbon. And our modelling research, published yesterday, brings us a big step closer to making this futuristic technology a reality.
But the efficacy and efficiency of CCS has long been controversial due to its high-operational costs and scaling-up issues for a wider application.
An ongoing problem, more specifically, is the effectiveness of materials used to capture the CO₂, such as absorbents. One example is called “amine scrubbing“, a method used since 1930 to separate, for instance, CO₂ from natural gas and hydrogen.
The problems with amine scrubbing include its high costs, corrosion-related issues and high losses in materials and energy. Liquid marbles can overcome some of these challenges.
This technology can be almost invisible to the naked eye, with some marbles under 1 millimetre in diameter. The liquid it holds—most commonly water or alcohol—is on the scale of microlitres (a microlitre is one thousandth of a millilitre).
The marbles have an outer layer of nanoparticles that form a flexible and porous shell, preventing the liquid within from leaking out. Thanks to this armour, they can behave like flexible, stretchable and soft solids, with a liquid core.
What do marbles have to do with CCS?
Liquid marbles have many unique abilities: they can float, they roll smoothly, and they can be stacked on top of each other.
Other desirable properties include resistance to contamination, low-friction and flexible manipulation, making them appealing for applications such as gas capture, drug delivery and even as miniature bio-reactors.
In the context of CO₂ capture, their ability to selectively interact with gases, liquids and solids is most crucial. A key advantage of using liquid marbles is their size and shape, because thousands of spherical particles only millimetres in size can directly be installed in large reactors.
Gas from the reactor hits the marbles, where it clings to the nanoparticle outer shell (in a process called “adsorption”). The gas then reacts with the liquid within, separating the CO₂ and capturing it inside the marble. Later, we can take out this CO₂ and store it underground, and then recycle the liquid for future processing.
This process can be a more time and cost-efficient way of capturing CO₂ due to, for example, the liquid (and potentially solid) recycling, as well as the marbles’ high mechanical strength, reactivity, sorption rates and long-term stability.
So what’s stopping us?
Despite recent progress, many properties of liquid marbles remain elusive. What’s more, the only way to test liquid marbles is currently through physical experiments conducted in a laboratory.
Physical experiments have their limitations, such as the difficulty to measure the surface tension and surface area, which are important indicators of the marble’s reactivity and stability.
In this context, our new computational modelling can improve our understanding of these properties, and can help overcome the use of costly and time-intensive experiment-only procedures.
Another challenge is developing practical, rigorous and large-scale approaches to manipulate liquid marble arrays within the reactor. Further computational modelling we’re currently working on will aim to analyse the three-dimensional changes in the shapes and dynamics of liquid marbles, with better convenience and accuracy.
This will open up new horizons for a myriad of engineering applications, including CO₂ capture.
Beyond carbon capture
Research on liquid marbles started off as just an inquisitive topic around 20 years ago and, since then, ongoing research has made it a sought-after platform with applications beyond carbon capture.
This cutting-edge technology could not only change how we solve climate problems, but environmental and medical problems, too.
Magnetic liquid marbles, for example, have demonstrated their potential in biomedical procedures, such as drug delivery, due to their ability to be opened and closed using magnets outside the body. Other applications of liquid marbles include gas sensing, acidity sensing and pollution detection.
With more modelling and experiments, the next logical step would be to scale up this technology for mainstream use.
Australian not-for-profit Orange Sky, supported by Australian electronics manufacturer, REDARC and global visual communications platform, Canva, launch solar powered laundry van to support people experiencing homelessness in Australian remote communities.
Equipped with a REDARC solar and lithium battery management system, the RV3.0 laundry van has the ability to produce more power than it uses, decreasing electrical consumption by up to 80% per shift.
A total of eight RV3.0 vehicles and three retrofit RV3.0 vehicles will be built at the Orange Sky headquarters and introduced to remote communities including Maningrida, Wadeye, Fitzroy Crossing, Bidyadanga and Palm Island to meet the demand for laundry services.
After launching the Waru Dryer – the world’s first fuel-powered and solar battery-operated clothes dryer just last month, Aussie not-for-profit Orange Sky have today launched another world first – a solar-powered laundry van equipped with three washers and three dryers.
Orange Sky provides access to free laundry services, warm showers and genuine, non-judgmental conversation and connection to community members doing it tough, across Australia and New Zealand via bright orange mobile vans.
With their dedicated ‘Imagination and Innovation’ department, the organisation strives to think outside the box to create smarter and more efficient ways to drive greater impact, with their most recent innovation, the RV3.0 vehicle, doing just that.
The Orange Sky innovation team undertook the preliminary ideation, developing the schematic of the vehicle using Canva, with the global visual communications platform integral to rapidly iterating concepts during early stages of design.
The RV3.0 vehicle is powered by four 180-watt REDARC solar panels, 600-amp hours in lithium batteries and a battery management and charging system to effectively capture, store and use the renewable energy harnessed, giving the vehicle the ability to produce more power than it uses, reducing electrical consumption by up to 80% per shift.
“The fit out of solar powered technology allows us to eliminate our diesel generator entirely. By doing so, we hope to see a significant decrease in vehicle servicing and maintenance downtime,” Orange Sky Lead Engineer, Ben Battaglia said.
“The RV3.0 vehicles are also fitted with our newly created Waru Dryers, which reduces the electrical consumption from that of a regular clothes dryer by 90%.”
Orange Sky Co-Founder, Nic Marchesi says exploring new and better ways to scale their impact and reach communities they never could have before is at the heart of what Orange Sky do.
“The thought of creating a more reliable, environmentally sustainable vehicle that has the ability to complete more loads of washing and drying and reduce maintenance requirements was something myself and the whole team were working towards for our remote community expansion, and thanks to the generous support of Canva and REDARC, our ideas have now come to life,” Mr Marchesi said.
“The demand for washing and drying services in remote Australian communities is very prevalent, however in our efforts to support the remote communities, we found that due to the geographic remoteness, terrain and demand for laundry services, we needed to create a reliable vehicle that was built for the climate and greater usage, so that’s where the RV3.0 came in,” Mr Marchesi said.
Orange Sky undertook a three-month remote venture from March to June this year travelling to a total of 29 remote Indigenous communities from South Australia, the Northern Territory, and the northern ends of Western Australia and Queensland to connect with communities and identify where the most need is for the next Orange Sky service.
Leading the remote expedition, Orange Sky Remote Program Manager, Judith Meiklejohn says they have been inundated with people engaging with their services in every remote location they have visited.
“Many people and families in remote communities don’t have access to basic facilities like washing machines and if they do, they are often overused and don’t last long – with new washing machines being extremely expensive and the geographical location making it challenging to find a technician to repair items,” Judith said.
“Since introducing the RV3.0 vehicle to Wadeye alongside our local partner TDC, during our testing phase, we have been overwhelmed with the response from the community. The laundry van not only meets the strong demand for laundry facilities, but it brings together so many different families and clan groups, which is a really beautiful outcome.”
Signing on to support Orange Sky as a National Power Partner for the next three years, REDARC Electronics Managing Director, Anthony Kittel says they believe in the Orange Sky mission to ‘positively connect communities’, a mission that strongly resonates with REDARC’s values.
“We are delighted to partner with Orange Sky to support their remote community expansion plans. REDARC’s mobile power tech provides a more reliable and sustainable mechanism for Orange Sky to deliver their critical mission,” Mr Kittel said.
Similarly, Canva Co-Founder and COO, Cliff Obrecht says “it’s fantastic to see Canva being used to help raise awareness for important causes and initiatives such as Orange Sky. Their team is doing an incredible job in remote communities across Australia, and we’re glad to be a part of their journey.”
As part of its mission to support the nation’s most vulnerable communities, Orange Sky, in partnership with REDARC and Canva, will be introducing a total of eight RV3.0 laundry vehicles to their fleet, and fitting out three of their current laundry vehicles with the REDARC gear, with all 11 RV3.0 vehicles set to service remote communities.
Australia Post has welcomed the first of 20 electric trucks to its national delivery fleet, with three Fuso eCanters now delivering parcels to customers in Melbourne ahead of Christmas.
The eCanter adds to Australia Post’s existing electric delivery fleet of more than 2100 electric delivery vehicles and 1400 electric bicycles and follows the successful trial of the Daimler developed truck in late 2019.
Australia Post General Manager Networks, James Dixon said the addition of the Fuso eCanter to Australia Post’s delivery fleet was an exciting step for the organisation.
“We’re very proud to be Australia’s largest electric fleet operator, but up until this point, our electric fleet has consisted solely of smaller delivery vehicles that are used for the last-mile.
“We’ve trialled a range of electric trucks previously, but the Fuso eCanter is the first we’ve found that suits both Australian conditions and our unique operational needs,” Mr Dixon concluded.
Australia Post Chief Sustainability Officer Susan Mizrahi said expanding the current electric fleet was an important part of the Australia Post’s 2020-22 Corporate Responsibility plan and its science-based target to reduce emission by 15 per cent by 2025.
“This is an important milestone for our business. We know that every delivery has a carbon footprint which is why we’re committed to reducing our emissions through growing our electric fleet and increasing our renewable energy production to help power these new vehicles,” Ms Mizrahi said.
The Fuso eCanter is the only Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) electric truck available in Australia and uses the latest technology from the Daimler Truck group.
Daniel Whitehead, the President and CEO of Daimler Truck and Bus Australia Pacific, which represents the Fuso, Freightliner and Mercedes-Benz brands, said Australia Post was the perfect first Australian customer for the eCanter.
“Daimler is thrilled to partner with such an iconic brand as Australia Post on a journey towards carbon neutral freight transportation in Australia,” he said.
The remaining 17 eCanters will hit the streets delivering in major capital cities from early 2022, with the rollout of the new vehicles supported by Australia Post Fleet Management Provider SG Fleet.
Australia Post is currently two-thirds of the way through its 2020-22 Group Corporate Responsibility Plan Everyone Matters: Our plan for inclusive and sustainable prosperity. The strategy is available at: auspost.com.au/CR
About Australia Post’s science-based target
Australia Post is committed to reducing scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 15 per cent by FY2025 (from a FY2019 baseline), aligned with a well-below 2°C pathway.
Any emissions generated by the electricity usage from the Fuso eCanter will be offset through the purchase of renewable energy certificates.
Australian electric vehicle drivers are on average driving further than people with petrol vehicles as infrastructure improves, new statistics show.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics for the first time looked at how electric vehicle drivers use their cars and found that in the 12 months to 30 June 2020 they had travelled 69 million km.
Electric vehicles travelled 11.1 thousand km on average, which was 600km more than drivers of petrol vehicles for the year.
In New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT, EV owners travelled further than petrol vehicle owners, with Queensland not far behind. But electric vehicles lagged behind in South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
On the whole electric vehicles were still mostly confined to the cities and urban areas, with nearly three-quarters of all travel – 72.5% – taking place within capital cities. While EVs only recorded 5 million km of travel outside urban areas, or 7.2% of the total, they still recorded 2 million km of travel interstate.
Dr Jake Whitehead, the Electric Vehicle Council’s head of policy, said these early results were promising as they showed people were beginning to leave urban environments as infrastructure improves.
“The claim that EVs will end the weekend can be put to bed,” Whitehead said. “We are seeing them used for those longer-distance trips interstate.
“Overall this is very encouraging and demonstrates that Australians are adopting electric vehicles, and that having freedom to travel across the country is being helped by the increase infrastructure.”
Whitehead also said that the data comes with some caveats as it relied on a small sample size and different states and territories do not always clearly sort whether a car is an electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid or another kind.
“We should be very clear about what an electric vehicle is: it’s been established internationally that an EV is one you plug in and power using electricity,” Whitehead said.
“Hybrids and these mythical hydrogen cars – which there are very few of – unless they can be plugged in and powered they are not EVs. And we should treat them separately, especially as they have different infrastructure requirements.”
The results come as the Australian government faces criticism for not doing enough to support the transition to electric with its new electric vehicle strategy.
While the strategy was presented as a “reboot” for the Coalition, it offered little to help encourage the uptake of electric vehicles and instead focused on the rollout of charging infrastructure.
This lack of clarity has continued with Nationals whip Damian Drum calling for the introduction of an EV road user charge, saying that as uptake increases revenue from the fuel excise will decrease, forcing governments to “find those monies from somewhere”.
“You look at a future in Australia where if we move to more EVs, which undoubtedly we will, people that are driving EVs will have to be paying some sort of road tax,” Drum said.
In a secret location in an industrial area in western Sydney, a test strip of asphalt is being laid.
But this is no ordinary road.
The 50-metre strip stretching out into the hot afternoon sun is held together by an unusual material. The gooey cellulose that binds a road surface together is usually imported from overseas, but here it has been sourced locally: from the paper, plastic, lids and liners of coffee cups that were once destined for landfill.
A test strip of road which incorporates coffee cups from the Simply Cups program. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
For months now, heavily loaded trucks have rolled back and forth over this asphalt and the surface has held up without cracking. The product has been put through a machine test that flexes it until it fails. So far, it has done everything a road surface is expected to do, and then some, says John Kypreos, director of State Asphalt Services. “It’s a better performance product than what we were producing before.”
Exactly how much of the asphalt was once part of a takeaway coffee cup is top secret, according to Kypreos. Ask too many questions and you’re hit with the same answer: that’s the “secret herbs and spices”.
But the western Sydney asphalt manufacturer is on the cusp of rolling out the first roads in Australia surfaced with recycled waste from coffee cups, as part of a collaboration with recycling program Simply Cups. The unusual partnership was brokered by the organisation Closed Loop, which looks for opportunities to achieve what’s known as “net-positive waste”.
Kypreos met Closed Loop’s chief commercial officer, Chris Collimore, about a year ago, after a late-night conversation at a birthday party turned to how waste can be used to make roads. Soon after, he saw a Simply Cups collection stand in a 7-Eleven, and got on the phone to Collimore.
“It really did start with an idea that John had that he then matched up with our program,” Collimore says.
Chris Collimore, the chief commercial officer of Closed Loop. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Net-positive waste
The idea is a simple one: instead of burying waste in landfill, the raw materials of that waste are “upcycled” into new products. It means not only keeping stuff out of landfill, but that fewer virgin resources are consumed in the manufacture of new products. It also means less energy and therefore less greenhouse gas emissions go into the sourcing of those new resources.
That’s what’s called closing the loop, or a circular economy.
But there’s a big but: someone has to buy these recycled products, or else the loop has not actually been closed. And that’s where Closed Loop comes in as matchmaker: pairing up waste streams with companies that can do something with them.
Coffee cups are collected by Simply Cups and then turned into asphalt. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
“It’s not until you’re actually buying back the products that are made out of that [reused] material that you’re … properly recycling,” says Rob Pascoe, the organisation’s founder and head. “It’s not just a matter of lifting the lid on your yellow bin at home and putting stuff in the bin and saying, ‘I’ve done my job’.”
There are three conditions that need to be met to close the loop on a waste stream. First, there has to be a need for the product made from that waste, whether that be fence posts or street furniture. Second, the product made from waste has to be fit for purpose – it has to meet the same standards as the existing version. And third, it must be commercially viable.
Commercial viability isn’t about being cheaper than the non-waste-based alternative, Pascoe says. A product made from recycled materials might be slightly more expensive, but consumers need to remember how much money they’re simultaneously saving on waste disposal.
While coffee cups are attractive because they are an everyday and relatively easily collectable waste stream, the real low-hanging fruit for waste reuse is food waste, says Pascoe. Australia spends more than a billion dollars on artificial fertilisers in an attempt to restore the nutrient capacity of the soil that our food crops are grown in. But at the same time, we’re sending huge amounts of food waste to landfill where it generates methane.
“It’s sheer stupidity,” he says.
State Asphalt Services in western Sydney. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
Soft plastics are another one, and here Pascoe disagrees with the move to ban single-use plastics.
“It’s not the plastics that are the problem, it’s what we do with the plastics,” he says. As soon as you put a value on waste, it stops being waste and starts being a resource. “If we do that, it is very, very easy to recycle plastics.”
Pascoe says Australia has failed to invest in the necessary infrastructure to recycle properly. When community enthusiasm for recycling was at its peak, few knew the reality: that the waste we so carefully sorted into recycling bins was being shipped off to China.
“That has become what recycling means, and it’s not what recycling means,” he says. “We should be putting the demand back on people who create the waste to buy back products.”
Waste recovery and reuse has the potential to boost the Australian manufacturing industry. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
That change needs to come from the top, Pascoe argues, with government procurement policies that mandate a minimum amount of post-consumer recycled materials in products.
“If we can get to that point with governments then we’ve basically won the issue.”
A major boost for industry
Closing the loop doesn’t just offer environmental benefits, there are huge economic benefits as well, according to Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia. Every 10,000 tonnes of waste that is recovered, reused, repurposed or recycled creates 9.2 jobs, compared with just 2.4 jobs if that material is sent to landfill or exported.
“We’ve got the chance to create four times as many jobs if we actually think about the materials that we consume and purchase, the supply chains, the collection, the reprocessing and the remanufacturing on shore,” Sloan says. Waste recovery and reuse offers the potential to be a major boost for the Australian manufacturing industry coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, if it’s done right.
Sloan says the right sort of conversations are beginning within government, with MPs starting to talk about resources instead of waste, and “recognising that it’s not just something we discard in a linear way”.
The joint federal, state and territory governments’ 2019 National Waste Policy Action Plan set a target of banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres starting in late 2020, achieving an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030, and increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry. In July this year, the federal government also committed $190m to a new Recycling Modernisation Fund that is intended to generate investment in Australia’s waste and recycling capacity.
Sloan argues Australia also needs a paradigm shift in thinking about how products are manufactured and consumed.
“We need to choose the right materials when we extract resources, and design it in such a way that the value proposition is there and the worth of the material is recognised,” she says. She’d like to see the Australian government mandating the shift to a circular economy strategy, like the European Union has done with its circular economy package.
“It’s not anti-competitive because that is the expectation, that we engage in circular economy that is designing out waste, creating regenerated systems and creating jobs,” she says. “All we’re doing is coming into line with the rest of the world.”
Cradle to cradle
Back in western Sydney, the eventual goal for Collimore and Kypreos is a road that is made of 100% recycled material.
Apologising for the “messy” state of his plant, Kypreos points out piles of crushed rock, sand, bitumen and lime, as well as bits of old road surface, which are all set to be transformed into asphalt. He is already using recycled glass to substitute for some of the sand. A complex process of dehydrating and heating turns it all into road surface.
Chris Collimore’s goal is a road that is made of 100% recycled material. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian
There are huge opportunities for industry to make use of waste streams in Australia, Kypreos says, but the infrastructure that’s needed to sort and store waste so it can be easily accessed just doesn’t exist yet. He argues that waste levies should be spent on building that infrastructure, and on encouraging innovative partnerships and projects.
“There’s product in there,” he argues. “It’s just a matter of sitting down and testing and building the science to see if these items that they can pull out of their waste streams are useable or reusable.” But he’s also wary of being seen as the only option. “We’ve got to be careful that we’re not looked at as the new landfill alternative.”
Turning coffee cups into roads is a step in the right direction, but truly closing the loop means ensuring no raw materials are lost at any point along their life cycle. It’s a cradle-to-cradle mentality.
The ultimate goal is to reproduce the same product with recycled material, says Sloan. Plastics – white plastics in particular – would be an easy place to start, she says, because “we can turn that back into a yoghurt container over and over and over – if we choose the right materials, if we have the right collection.”
The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the economy but also presented a unique opportunity: to invest in climate action that creates jobs and stimulates investment, before it’s too late. The Green Recovery features talk to people on the frontline of Australia’s potential green recovery.
Judging from how often the H-word came up during this week’s marathon dialogues held to discuss the energy transition in Asia, it is clear that hydrogen is having its big moment.
Even as players in the region acknowledge that it might take some time before their investments in low-carbon hydrogen pay off, many are pinning their hopes on the hydrogen economy redrawing the energy map of tomorrow.
At two separate conferences this week, high-level representatives from energy institutes based in Japan and Australia were especially bullish on the prospects of hydrogen. Both countries are leading the charge in Asia to roll out technological solutions to promote the alternative fuel as part of their energy transition strategies.
Speaking at the APAC Energy Conversations, a virtual event organised as part of the Energy Industries Council (EIC)’s biannual flagship conference, Miranda Taylor, who leads National Energy Resources Australia (NERA), said that her organisation is particularly focused on “the hydrogen journey”.
Australia’s energy institutes are now focused on helping the island continent build a renewable hydrogen industry, said Miranda Taylor, chief executive of NERA (top right in picture) at the recent EIC-APAC Energy Conversations. NERA is also working with authorities to ensure that the decommissioning of coal in Asia is up to standard. [Click to enlarge] Source: GE Gas Power
NERA is a non-profit working to support the island continent’s energy transition, by coordinating the provision of seed funding for companies and innovators. “Within the industry, we all know that the hydrogen story is a complex one. It is also an ‘unproven’ story, because there are doubts about how clean the fuel will finally be. Nonetheless, considerable investments in hydrogen are pouring in,” she said.
Professor Tatsuya Terazawa, chairman and chief executive of Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics, similarly believes that green hydrogen – hydrogen generated from renewables – is the answer if Asia is seeking a “pragmatic approach”.
Not cheap nor lucrative yet
The region, unfortunately, cannot enjoy the growth potential of solar and wind power, due to its land and weather limitations, said Terazawa, at a Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW) dialogue session on Monday. “There are also no transmission lines connecting Asia with regions rich in these renewables. But we can innovate and find a way to lower the costs of transporting hydrogen and it will alter the calculus of the energy transition in Asia,” he said.
It remains unclearhow clean or lucrative hydrogen can be. Hydrogen has been the promised fuel of the future since the 1970s but there have been many false starts in the past decade. More than 95 per cent of the hydrogen used today, commonly known as ‘grey hydrogen’, is extracted from natural gas. The process of manufacturing hydrogen involves electrolysing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen and is hugely water and energy-intensive.
An overview map of where different countries are at developing a hydrogen strategy. Investment in hydrogen production projects worldwide is increasing and the number of countries that already have strategies for the use of the fuel has increased from just three in 2019 to 17 today. Image: World Energies Council
Over the past few years, the industry has been turning to low-carbon energy sources such as renewables and nuclear power to extract hydrogen, but it is still prohibitively expensive. Within the region, countries like Singapore are opting to develop subsea cables to import renewable energy from its neighbours, rather than hedge bets on hydrogen.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), in the Global Hydrogen Review, its new annual publication focused on tracking progress in hydrogen production and demand, estimates that putting the hydrogen sector on a path consistent with global net zero emissions by 2050 requires US$1.2 trillion in investments by 2030.
To curb climate change, about US$90 billion of public money needs to be channelled into clean energy innovation worldwide as quickly as possible – with around half of it dedicated to hydrogen-related technology, the report said.
Within the industry, we all know that the hydrogen story is a complex one. It is also an ‘unproven’ story, because there are doubts about how clean the fuel will finally be.
Miranda Taylor, CEO, National Energy Resources Australia (NERA)
In Asia, Japan is spearheading the Hydrogen Energy Ministerial (HEM) meeting, a multilateral initiative organised to create consensus on hydrogen-related collaborations. According to the Institute of Energy Economics, for the region to realise net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, annual costs could go up to 2.9 per cent of each country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
“It is difficult to get a region that is the growth centre of the world to give up on growth,” said Terazawa.
Japan is banking on transforming hydrogen into ammonia to make it much less expensive to carry in the absence of transmission pipelines, and Terazawa thinks it is the right way forward. To transport hydrogen as a liquid, it needs to be cooled to a temperature of -252 °C, while ammonia can be carried as a liquid at just -33 °C, explained Terazawa.
“It will be the cheapest option for Asia if it wants to decarbonise,” he said.
Where will the gold rush lead to?
Referring to Malaysia’s energy ministry’s announcement this week that it will limit renewable energy exports to Singapore, Andrew Bedford, director of energy transition at US-based consultancy Jacobs, said that governments in Asia are feeling the heat to meet their net-zero targets. This might fuel a more nationalistic mindset when it comes to the way they think about renewables and energy, he said.
“At the same time, it means that [countries that used to be] major energy importers now have an opportunity to invest in emerging areas of opportunities, diversify their energy mix and own a share of a new market,” said Bedford.
Describing the surge of investments in hydrogen-related infrastructure as a “green gold rush”, Bedford said that bigger players are now snapping up “the best areas of land” that are suited to such development.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that hydrogen will become an important part of the Net-Zero Emissions (NZE) scenario, though the fuel forms only one part of the puzzle. [Click to enlarge] Image: IEA
In terms of coming up with comprehensive hydrogen plans, Southeast Asia still has a lot of catching up to do, said Bedford. The number of countries with hydrogen strategies has increased from just three in 2019 to 17 today, but none are from the region.
Singapore is working on one right now, though it is also taking a cautious approach in doing so. The island state announced on Monday that it will be awarding S$55 million to research projects that are focused on improving the technical and economic feasibility of low-carbon technologies, particularly hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), to enable local deployment in the future.
By 2035, Singapore aims to import up to 30 per cent of its power supply by 2035 in a bid to diversify the gas-dependent nation’s energy mix with renewables.
Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, delivering a speech at SIEW, spoke about low-carbon hydrogen’s potential to “be a game-changer for Singapore’s energy transition”.
Speaking at the opening of Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong said that the move to import low-carbon energy will be a “key needle mover” in Singapore’s energy transition in the near to medium term. Image: SIEW
For hydrogen to be deployed meaningfully, especially for the power sector, global supply chains and proper infrastructure for hydrogen need to be established and the costs of hydrogen transport, storage and use need to be competitive, said Gan.
Consigning coal to history
Experts at the energy dialogues said that while the viability of green hydrogen is being hammered out, gas is likely to play a role as a bridging fuel in the region’s energy transition.
Shantanu Som, engineering director for GE Gas Power, advocates for a more measured approach. “Companies are getting mixed signals on where they should be headed for. On one hand, Australia is aspiring to be the hydrogen hub for Asia and the government is taking very bold steps. On the other hand, you have China, which has a five-year plan but is just putting small stepping stones in-between in a very cautious manner,” he said.
China’s new road map, launched on Tuesday, pledged to hit peak greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade but stopped short of firm commitments to reduce reliance on coal.
When leaders gather at the COP26 summit in Glasgow this weekend, hydrogen is unlikely to prominently feature on their discussion agenda. The world needs to work on phasing out coal first, said energy experts.
Organisations working with authorities on pushing for the energy transition will need to have the capacity to make sure that coal decommissioning is done to the highest standards, said Taylor.
“The Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, has a considerable amount of offshore oil and gas infrastructure, which will need to be decommissioned or repurposed in the next decades. For a just transition to happen, we have to be realistic and make sure that workers are retrained, that they will be equipped with different skills and capabilities to work in a different industry,” she said.
Green hydrogen could revolutionise energy production, helping utilities run more flexible power grids while reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Beyond plans to sell electricity transmitted to energy-hungry Asian nations, Australia is looking to become a leading producer and exporter of green hydrogen by 2030. In addition to meeting the rising demand for clean fuel domestically and overseas, this vision will also bring benefits to the Australian community and nation’s economic prosperity.
While it has been touted as the fuel of the future for the past fifty years, the wider adoption of hydrogen has had several false starts. Nevertheless, a growing number of scientists and investors believe that the falling costs of renewables, electrolysers and fuel cell technology, could help see green hydrogen become commercially viable.
“While countries committed to substantially reducing their emissions by 2030, they realised that they did not have enough tools in the toolbox,” said Alan Finkel, who served as Australia’s chief scientist until last year.
“Many people do not appreciate just how difficult it will be to decarbonise the global energy supply. It is an enormous task, and we have to use all available means to do so,” Finkel said.
Australia’s big bet
Pressure crunching on countries to drive down their greenhouse gas emissions and meet their commitments to clean-up, is driving investment in hydrogen.
Developing hydrogen for export is part of Australia’s wider efforts to wean its economy off its dependency on fossil fuels which raked in A$103 billion (US$73 billion) in export earnings in 2019.
Investment in hydrogen-related projects in Australia started to take off around 2018 with the government committing A$146 million towards developing hydrogen resources along the supply chain to “enhance Australia’s energy security, create Australian jobs and build an export industry valued in the billions”.
HyResource, a knowledge sharing-platform on Australia’s hydrogen industry, estimates that around A$1.5 billion has been funnelled into clean hydrogen projects by Australian governments, industry, and research institutions over the past three years.
There are five operating projects, 14 under construction or in advanced development and 38 projects under development as of May, according to HyResource.
Green hydrogen for homes and industry
Hydrogen Park South Australia (HyP SA), located in the Tonsley Innovation District about 20 km south of Adelaide, is the first project operating in this state, with three others under development.
HyP SA is an Australian-first facility to produce a blend of 5 per cent green hydrogen in natural gas for supply using the existing gas network.
The A$11.4 million project was delivered by Australian Gas Networks (AGN), part of the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG), with funding of A$4.9 million from the South Australian Government.
The five-year demonstration plant commenced renewable blended gas supply to over 700 properties near the facility in May this year. It is also providing direct hydrogen supply to industry, and aims to supply hydrogen for transport in the future.
The introduction of green hydrogen reduces the amount of carbon in the gas supply network, without any changes to infrastructure or receiving household appliances, and lays the foundations for scaling-up green hydrogen projects elsewhere.
The success of this demonstration plant will be pivotal for South Australia, which has a reliable renewable energy supply and is working towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Enabling technology – electrolysers
At the heart of the HyP SA facility, is a 1.25 megawatt (MW) Siemens Energy Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyser that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity, capable of producing up to 20 kg of hydrogen an hour.
This is the largest single electrolyser unit in operation in Australia today, although new projects in the development stage include electrolyser units or facilities at 10 MW or more.
PEM electrolysers are a potential solution to tackle the variable conditions by renewable energy generation, according to Siemens Energy. Electrolysers can ramp up when renewable electricity is abundant and switch off when demand is high. Integrating electrolysers into the electricity networks could also support energy stability.
The Siemens Energy electrolysis solution for making green hydrogen is based on the PEM concept. Image: Siemens Energy
There are water resource considerations to take into account, particularly in areas where there is scarcity. The PEM electrolyser uses about 15 litres of water to produce one kg of hydrogen. For future developments, there may be potential use for the oxygen by-product – such as in wastewater treatment.
“It is imperative for hydrogen producers to carefully consider water availability, especially for larger plants in remote areas. We see the potential for wastewater recycling and desalination which would add a surprisingly small amount to overall project costs,” according to Michael Bielinski, managing director of Siemens Energy Australasia.
Nevertheless, cheap renewable energy needs to be rolled out fast enough for this technology to work. This might be difficult when demand from other sectors for wind, solar and other alternative power sources is expected to rise.
Scaling up for decarbonisation
The South Australia demonstration plant is paving the way for other states to decarbonise their gas consumption and has helped to build confidence in the industry that up to 10 per cent green hydrogen natural gas blend is suitable for current use in Australia without disruption to supply.
Two projects with a higher blend rate of 10 per cent green hydrogen are in progress at Hydrogen Park (HyP) Murray Valley in Wodonga, Victoria and Hydrogen Park (HyP) Gladstone in Queensland. HyP SA is also helping to establish a domestic market for renewable hydrogen.
However, the long-term goal is to transition domestic gas supply to 100 per cent renewable by gas by 2050, with a 2040 stretch target. Research by the Australian Hydrogen Centreis underway to understand the feasibility of100 per cent hydrogen replacement of natural gas in Victoria and South Australia would look like. This also provides a strong signal to electrolyser manufacturers for the potential deployment of large-scale electrolysis.
Expanding green hydrogen potential
Natural gas replacement in people’s homes is only one example of green hydrogen use. Part of its appeal is that it could reach parts of the economy other green fuels cannot.
“The electrons in electricity are incredibly versatile, almost magical, but nevertheless, there are limits. By using zero emissions electricity to crack water, we can produce a supply of molecules that can take over where the electrons fall short,” Finkel told Eco-Business.
Finkel believes that hydrogen is the obvious solution for replacing the metallurgical coal in steelmaking that is responsible for 7 per cent or more of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“A large fraction of that metallurgical coal works as a chemical, to reduce the iron oxide to elemental iron, with carbon dioxide as a by-product. Hydrogen can replace coal in that role, acting as a chemical, to reduce the iron oxide to elemental iron, with dihydrogen oxide (water) as the by-product.”
“Ammonia made from clean hydrogen can be used as the chemical feedstock to make zero emissions fertiliser. It is also the leading contender to replace the bunker fuel that powers the world’s maritime fleet,” Finkel said.
Many of the slated export-oriented projects include electrolyser capacities that are equal to or exceed 100 MW. In addition, other hydrogen-related developmental projects have sought environmental approvals for wind and solar generation capacities over 10 GW. Timelines are under development but experts expect few will be operational in the first half of this decade.
For applications that cannot be easily electrified, green hydrogen forms the bridge between renewable electricity and carbon neutral fuels. We have no doubt that clean hydrogen will be essential to power our world in the future.
Michael Bielinski, managing director, Siemens Energy Australasia
The path to economically sustainable hydrogen
Despite being the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen has faced its fair share of challenges.Risk management firm, DNV, identifies infrastructure and cost as two of biggest hurdles facing a transition to a global hydrogen economy.
The Australian government has set a stretch goal of ‘H2 under $2’, an ambition to reach price parity with fossil hydrogen. Including typical capital investments needed to prepare sites for electrolysis, green hydrogen can be produced for about A$6-9 per kg compared to “grey” hydrogen produced from traditional carbon intensive methods at A$1.40 per kg.
To achieve the price point of under A$2, electrolyser costs will need to fall from between A$2 and A$3 million per MW to A$500,000 per MW with the cost of electricity from solar and wind to half, according to Darren Miller, chief executive of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
There is hope. Analysis by the IEA in 2019 found that the cost of producing hydrogen from renewable electricity could fall 30 per cent by 2030 as a result of the declining costs of renewables and the scaling up of hydrogen production. The cost of electrolysis equipment has fallen by around 40 per cent in the past five years while the price of solar alone has fallen by 85 per cent in the past decade.
“As more industries adopt green hydrogen energy, the total costs will continue to come down. The key to this is in scaling up production, efficient deployment methodologies and of course the ongoing reduction in renewable energy costs,” Bielinski said.
It is likely that full-scale plants will be powered by dedicated solar and wind resources depending on renewable energy requirements of all Australian hydrogen projects combined, including export.
“The key to cost savings could be hydrogen production facilities built jointly with wind/solar farms, so producers could generate power without incurring grid fees, taxes and levies,” according to analysis by Carolina Dores, co-head of the investment bank, Morgan Stanley European Utility team. While recognising that green hydrogen today is “uneconomical”, Morgan Stanley believes price parity is possible.
Developers and investors also need to factor in policy, regulatory approvals and practical issues that span construction, production, transport and storage and use, export, and demand-side regimes, according to a note by Allens, a law firm. Proving the safety case in both the workplace and for transport and storage remains key to scaling and widespread industry and community acceptance.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), who provides forecasting and planning publications for the National Electricity Market (NEM) has developed the Hydrogen Superpower Scenario – placing the hydrogen economy within the realm of possibility.
“Clean hydrogen will be crucial in the global energy transition. For applications that cannot be easily electrified, green hydrogen forms the bridge between renewable electricity and carbon neutral fuels. We have no doubt that clean hydrogen will be essential to power our world in the future,” said Bielinski.
“As a company with a strong portfolio along the energy value chain, Siemens Energy can provide the expertise and innovative technologies that will advance Australia’s hydrogen future and lead the nation’s status as a major energy leader.”
Australia has the potential to develop a substantial offshore wind energy industry from scratch, with abundant resources available near existing electricity substations across the continent, according to a new report.
The Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre said Australia was yet to capitalise on significant offshore wind capacity despite the International Energy Agency nominating it as one of the “big three” likely sources of renewable energy globally alongside solar and onshore wind.
It found more than 2,000GW of offshore wind turbines – far more than Australia’s existing generation capacity – could be installed in areas within 100km of substations. Environmentally restricted and low-wind areas were excluded from the assessment.
Sites that have traditionally been electricity generation hubs, such as the Hunter and Latrobe valleys and Gladstone, were found to be particularly suitable as they were close to transmission grids and had strong offshore winds at times when solar and onshore wind output was limited.
Dr Chris Briggs, research director at the University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures and a contributor to the report, said there had been a view in the energy industry that offshore wind energy would not play as significant a role in Australia as some other countries due to the availability of much cheaper solar and onshore wind energy.
He said that was starting to change as people recognised the scale of the clean energy transition required and what offshore wind could deliver. “The combination of the scale, falling cost and the development of floating wind turbines means it has come into focus,” he said.
Briggs said offshore wind could be built on a much larger scale than solar or onshore wind – up to 2GW for a project – and could generate more electricity per megawatt of capacity. “This could be very valuable in the late 2020s and 2030s as we see coal plants retiring,” he said.
The project’s leader, Dr Mark Hemer of the CSIRO, said offshore wind could be particularly important under “energy superpower” scenarios that involved mass electrification of industry and transport and hydrogen production for domestic use and export.
The report said there were 10 offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of 25GW in development in Australia, all at an early stage. The most advanced is the $10bn Star of the South – a 2.2GW windfarm planned for between 7km and 25km offshore in South Gippsland.
The federal government is yet to finalise the regulatory framework necessary for an offshore wind industry to develop. The report said it could help develop an industry by supporting the technology through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, incorporating it into planning for the national hydrogen strategy, and considering allocation of marine space in commonwealth waters.
The work was partly funded by the maritime, electrical and manufacturing unions. They called on federal and state governments to take immediate steps to support the development of an industry, saying it had the potential to create jobs for workers in fossil fuel industries.
Paddy Crumlin, the national secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, said the development of an offshore wind industry would give seafarers and offshore oil and gas workers an opportunity “to transition into the important work of delivering Australia’s clean energy future”.
Offshore wind is more advanced in countries with limited capacity to develop renewable energy on land. The report said 2030 targets for offshore wind energy totalled about 200GW, including 60GW in the European Union, 40GW in Britain and 12 GW in South Korea. Japan plans to reach 45GW by 2040.
A report by BloombergNEF and Bloomberg Philanthropies this week found Australia increased support for fossil fuel by 48% between 2015 and 2019, the largest rise in the G20.
It said most of the support had been delivered in the form of tax breaks to oil and gas projects. They included tax capex deductions for mining and petroleum operations, fuel-tax credits and reductions in fuel-excise rates and offset schemes. Australia “lost out on nearly US$6bn in foregone taxes” over the five years, it said.
The Bloomberg report did not include the Morrison government’s support for a “gas-fired recovery” from the pandemic. The government dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to gas projects in the May budget, including up to $600m for a new power plant in the Hunter Valley that experts say is not needed.
