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Green hydrogen: is this Australia’s breakout moment amid US$127 billion boom down under?

  • In the third of a four-part series, Eric Ng and Yujie Xue look at start-ups that are working on creating the infrastructure and technology to take the fuel mainstream

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Illustration: Eunice Tse
Eric NgandYujie Xue
In the third of a four-part series on green hydrogen, Eric Ng and Yujie Xue look into Chinese and global start-ups that are working on creating the infrastructure and technology to take the low-carbon fuel mainstream.
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On a site three times the size of Hong Kong, a US$10 billion project mooted in Australia has raised hopes of tackling greenhouse gas emissions with green hydrogen.

Located 400km north of Alice Springs in central Australia, phase one of the proposed Green Springs project, targeted for completion by 2030, will feature 10 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels, enough to meet the requirements of more than 3 million households.

If the project, spread over 200 square kilometres, gets the go ahead and is successfully financed, the solar farms will power 2,150 modules of “electrolysers”, each with a capacity of 5 megawatts (MW). They will use the abundant power generated to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

Some 3,000 sq km of additional land is being acquired in the arid region for subsequent expansion and downstream industries, said James Ieong, co-founder of Climate Impact Corporation, a Darwin-based firm formed in 2022, which is developing the project.

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“Australia has plenty of flat terrain and we have the best infrastructure – railways and highways,” said the Hong Kong-based private equity veteran. “The beauty of hydrogen is that it can be reshaped into downstream products needed by different industries.”

Hydrogen, a highly flammable gas with a low energy density, is difficult and expensive to transport over long distances. This can be addressed by processing it into easy-to-transport products such as methanol and ammonia that are being piloted in ships and power plants.
SCMP Series
Green hydrogen and the global clean energy race
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