Media

A $51 million, 10 megawatt (MW) electrolyser is planned for North East Water’s local wastewater plant in Wodonga, one of the largest proposed for Australia, and will feed green hydrogen into the local gas network at a blend of up to 10 per cent. Tim Buckley says gas companies are substituting high emission, low cost gas for low emission, high cost green hydrogen and it’s a low value use of the hydrogen. Read more

With the world racing ahead with huge subsidies attracting massive capital inflows, the $500m commitment in the new federal Critical Minerals Strategy released this week is a drop in the ocean, and fails to take advantage of Australia’s unique position in the energy transition as a potential critical minerals value-adding superpower. Read more

Australia has the potential to secure its position as a world leader in value-added critical minerals supply that underpins the energy transition. However, while the new Australian Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030 released by the federal government this week rightly foregrounds leveraging international supply and value chain partnerships, the new funding of $500m to NAIF fails to invest in Australia’s minerals boom at a scale commensurate with the opportunity – and is an inadequate response to the capital investments of our partners and competitors in the global decarbonisation race, such as the US IRA. Read more

Tim Buckley breaks down the statement by AEMO CEO Daniel Westerman today that we are not moving fast enough on decarbonisation of the grid; and speaks to the federal government’s Critical Minerals Strategy released today that announced a $500m commitment to minerals processing – a disappointing underinvestment in Australia’s once in a century opportunity to leverage our massive reserves and lead globally on value-added energy transition materials. Read more