Electricity

• Just last week, United States President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled a climate pact to boost cooperation.
• If we locate green hydrogen plants near green steel facilities, we can shift the highly polluting steel industry away from fossil fuels.
• This green hydrogen would be piped a short distance to a green steel plant, which uses hydrogen and electricity to produce iron from the ore, and then an electric arc furnace to smelt steel.

Why is Australia so well placed?

• Under our red dirt lies an estimated 56 billion tonnes of iron ore, as of 2021.
• We also profit from the current emissions-heavy way of making steel, by exporting $72 billion worth of metallurgical coal.
• Clean steelmaking will bring major change to our iron ore exports if other countries take it up.
• Australia has vast reserves of magnetite ore, which previously hasn’t been in as much demand.

Where should we co-locate these plants?

• That makes them the logical first choice to co-locate solar, wind and hydrogen with iron and steelmaking.
• Steel will become even more important given it’s so vital to manufacturing solar and wind.
• First, it avoids the problem of transporting hydrogen, which, especially in liquid form, can be expensive and energy-intensive to transport.
• Policies to boost renewable energy and develop the hydrogen economy will create a more conducive environment for green steel production.
• He is affiliated with the Monash Energy Institute and the Monash Hydrogen Energy Research Node at Monash University.