Speaker 1: From Sports Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: When Tim Buckley was in Shanghai last month looking at
Speaker 1: electric cars, what he saw amazed him. He saw cars
Speaker 1: capable of traveling one thousand kilometers between fast chargers and
Speaker 1: thousands of sites where batteries could be swapped out in minutes.
Speaker 1: Buckley is a climate finance guy, so he knows evs
Speaker 1: and he came back sure that this new generation of
Speaker 1: vehicles held the answers to all the problems that have
Speaker 1: plagued the industry. He was convinced of something else as well.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen cars are dead. And it's not just Buckley who's
Speaker 1: gone colon hydrogen. Andrew Twicky Forrest has just announced he's
Speaker 1: scaling back his own hydrogen projects. Once sold as the
Speaker 1: silver bullet that would hasten the end of Australia's dependence
Speaker 1: on fossil fuels, hydrogen has now become an expensive and
Speaker 1: heated point of political debate. Today, National correspondent for the
Speaker 1: SAT Day Paper Mike Secam on why so many people
Speaker 1: went all the hydrogen and why so many are now
Speaker 1: walking away, raising questions about whether it has a future
Speaker 1: at all. It's Thursday, August onan.
Speaker 2: Mike. What was the promise of hydrogen power, Well, it
Speaker 2: was promising almost everything. I mean, people called it the
Speaker 2: Swiss Army Knife of energy sources. And you know, you
Speaker 2: can see why people were enthusiastic. Hydrogen is the most
Speaker 2: abundant element in the universe. It powers the sun, powers
Speaker 2: the stars, it's non toxic. There's apparently an infinite supply
Speaker 2: of it if we can find a way to produce
Speaker 2: it in an environmentally sustainable way. The promise was very
Speaker 2: big in a world.
Speaker 3: Verse two cars powered by hydrogen derived from ammonia hit
Speaker 3: the road in Queensland. Industry leaders say the breakthrough by
Speaker 3: the CSIRO could see Australia become a renewable energy superpower
Speaker 3: because the changing technology will allow the carbon free fuel
Speaker 3: to be shipped safely anywhere in the world.
Speaker 2: Only five years ago we produced our first national Hydrogen Strategy,
Speaker 2: presented to the government by Australia's then Chief scientist Dalan Finkel,
Speaker 2: and it foresaw hydrogen being used not only to power vehicles,
Speaker 2: but for home heating and cooking via the gas reticulation network,
Speaker 2: as a means of storing electricity generated by wind and
Speaker 2: solar and providing an alternative to fossil fuels for base
Speaker 2: load power. So they had a big future mapped out
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 4: Firstly, Allen, thanks to you for championing hydrogen as an
Speaker 4: agenda as part of Energy's Australias energy transition. There's lots
Speaker 4: of cynics along the way, and maybe Allen would even
Speaker 4: agree he was a cynic.
Speaker 2: And as the report said, it is quote flexible, safe,
Speaker 2: transportable and storable, and it could be piped around the
Speaker 2: nation and exported around the world to quote hydrogen hungary
Speaker 2: unquote countries. And it went on to make the promise
Speaker 2: that Australia could become the leader in the new industry
Speaker 2: of shipping sunshine. As Finkle put it, at the time,
Speaker 2: the future looked very bright about five years ago.
Speaker 1: And one of hydrogen's most ardam supporters was Andrew Forrest.
Speaker 1: What were his plans for hydrogen?
Speaker 2: Well, his plan was basically to export it to the world.
Speaker 2: You know, he saw a huge, huge potential for an
Speaker 2: export industry.
Speaker 5: All through Japan, through Europe, through Asia, China. We're speaking
Speaker 5: to all the big players and convincing them no longer
Speaker 5: is there an excuse that yeah, we'd really love to
Speaker 5: use green hydrogen, but we have to use fossil fuel.
Speaker 5: And I'm saying no, the time has come. Green hydrogen
Speaker 5: is going to have its day and the world will
Speaker 5: never go back to the rubbish bin. This is a
Speaker 5: multi generational change, This is a forever change.
Speaker 2: He also thought, of course, as a way to decarbonizing
Speaker 2: his mining operations. You know, he's a big guy on
Speaker 2: or minor Ford deesku Is. His company invested I think
Speaker 2: around one point one billion dollars in major projects. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, he announced partnerships with verious state and
Speaker 2: federal governments to help with the transition at R and D,
Speaker 2: and he set a target of producing fifteen million tons
Speaker 2: of hydrogen by twenty thirty and last year he was
Speaker 2: on stage in Morocco sprooking it still saying that you know,
Speaker 2: he was a big believer in batteries, but any person
Speaker 2: who said that hydrogen didn't have a role was a
Speaker 2: quote muppet unquote.
Speaker 5: I'm a huge believe in batteries, but any muppet he
Speaker 5: says hydrogen doesn't have a role is a muppet.
Speaker 2: And he repeated it just in case anyone didn't hear
Speaker 2: it the first time.
Speaker 1: To make sure that everybody got that.
Speaker 5: That's a Muppet show on stage.
Speaker 2: So you know, he basically threw down the gauntlet. Said,
Speaker 2: I'm saying to anyone, including Elon Musk, you know, whoever
Speaker 2: you like, whoever says hydrogen hasn't got a massive future,
Speaker 2: was and he said it a third time a Muppet.
Speaker 1: Elon is the Muppet.
Speaker 5: I'm saying, anyone including Elon in adding herve you like,
Speaker 5: who says hydrogen hasn't got a massive future a Muppets.
Speaker 1: And he was probably bullish for a reason because he
Speaker 1: wasn't alone in thinking that hydrogen was the way of
Speaker 1: the future. Industries and governments around the world has started
Speaker 1: to invest. So what are the Australia's plans for it? Now?
Speaker 2: So the government is supporting it. It's got something called
Speaker 2: the Hydrogen head Start Plan, which will provide four billion
Speaker 2: dollars in support of selected large scale renewable hydrogen projects
Speaker 2: which have not yet been enumerated, and it has budgeted
Speaker 2: a further six point seven billion and maybe more in
Speaker 2: production credits for any projects that actually get off the ground.
Speaker 2: But now a lot of players are changing their tune.
Speaker 2: Alan Finkel, he tells me, now that a number of
Speaker 2: the newses they foresaw for hydrogen have proven impractical. You know,
Speaker 2: hardly anyone outside the gas industry, for example, now sees
Speaker 2: any future for hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas
Speaker 2: in home heating and cooking. Tim Buckley, director of Climate
Speaker 2: Energy Finance, who has been a big advocate of hydrogen
Speaker 2: in the past, has just come back from China where
Speaker 2: he saw amazing developments in electric vehicles, and so he
Speaker 2: came back convinced that hydrogen cars will go the way
Speaker 2: of the Dodo and probably also you know, hydrogen heavy transport.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of big changes of emphasis there.
Speaker 2: And of course a week ago Andrew Forrest, the biggest
Speaker 2: booster of all, announced that he was scaling back his
Speaker 2: commitment to hydrogen as well.
Speaker 1: After the break, has the green hydrogen dream evaporated? Mark
Speaker 1: the turner aund in support for hydrogen has been swift.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why that is? What's changed?
Speaker 2: Sure? Put, simply a lot of people got it wrong.
Speaker 2: I spoke to the director of the think tank Climate
Speaker 2: Energy Finance, Tim Buckley, who admitted as much, and he
Speaker 2: said the reason he was so excited about hydrogen was
Speaker 2: that he thought it was going to get a lot
Speaker 2: cheaper to produce. I mean to explain how it's produced.
Speaker 2: What happens is you have to split water molecules that's
Speaker 2: H two O by electrolysis, which is essentially by the
Speaker 2: use of electricity, into hydrogen and oxygen, and that is
Speaker 2: quite an energy intensive process. They were going to do
Speaker 2: it with the use of cheap wind and solar, And
Speaker 2: if I might quote him, he said, five years ago,
Speaker 2: I was projecting solar to cost twenty to thirty dollars
Speaker 2: per mega what our and wind likely to be fifty
Speaker 2: to seventy dollars per mega what hour. But we're now
Speaker 2: talking about solar at sixty dollars per mega what our.
Speaker 2: That is two to three times as much as he
Speaker 2: had hoped, and win by probably around twice as much
Speaker 2: as he had hoped by twenty thirty and the cost
Speaker 2: of electrolyzers hasn't come down by anything like the amount
Speaker 2: that it was forecast to. So simply put, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people got carried away with the hype
Speaker 2: around hydrogen, and the basis for that was that they
Speaker 2: thought it was going to be a lot cheaper to
Speaker 2: produce than it looks like it will be. And of course,
Speaker 2: about a week ago, Forrest announced that he was walking
Speaker 2: away from his goal of producing fifteen million tons of
Speaker 2: hydrogen per annum by twenty thirty.
Speaker 6: Fordeskew has announced it will cut seven hundred jobs by
Speaker 6: the end of the month as part of a restructure.
Speaker 6: The mining giant has also abandoned its green hydrogen production
Speaker 6: targets by twenty thirty.
Speaker 2: The problem that has been cited by him is that
Speaker 2: electricity prices are just too high still, and so he
Speaker 2: announced that he was in fact moving his emphasis upstream,
Speaker 2: that he was now going to focus on the production
Speaker 2: of renewable energy from sun and wind.
Speaker 5: The cost of energy is high being forced on us
Speaker 5: around the world. There's no green hydrogen without very competitive
Speaker 5: cost of electricity.
Speaker 2: Of course, when Forest made his announcement, the renewable energy
Speaker 2: skeptics in politics and the media all piled on.
Speaker 1: It was about time. The whole project has never made sense.
Speaker 6: It was just always stupid to bet the house us
Speaker 6: on hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Well, look, he's woken up the reality.
Speaker 2: Particularly members of the Federal Coalition for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 2: they have long had a very prickly relationship with forrest.
Speaker 2: He has described the coalition's plans to build nuclear reactors
Speaker 2: as and I'm quoting him here, bulled ust policies of
Speaker 2: politicians masquerading as leaders.
Speaker 5: Misinformed, unscientific, uneconomic, plucked out of their thin air. Bull
Speaker 5: dust of nuclear policies of politicians masquading as leaders help
Speaker 5: no one.
Speaker 2: And he's accused them of dividing us with false hope
Speaker 2: that we can cling to fossil fuels. So he's got
Speaker 2: stuck right into them, and obviously they don't like that,
Speaker 2: so they saw his announcement as an opportunity to use
Speaker 2: him as a means of attacking the Labor government and
Speaker 2: its support of the nascent hydrogen industry.
Speaker 6: Labour has to stop its anti gas cruside.
Speaker 1: We need more gas. We needed a meeting.
Speaker 2: So Ted O'Brien, the opposition spokesman for climate change and energy,
Speaker 2: came out with a media statement saying that, and I'm
Speaker 2: quoting here, Twiggy's abandonment of green hydrogen has blown a
Speaker 2: gaping hole in the Albanese Labor Government's energy plans, he said,
Speaker 2: and it continued. Despite offering billions in taxpayer funds to
Speaker 2: these projects, they are still failing to get off the ground.
Speaker 2: With the collapse of Labour's green hydrogen plan, our energy
Speaker 2: security is under serious threat as the government continues to
Speaker 2: force ninety percent of Australia's twenty four to seven reliable
Speaker 2: baseload energy out of the grid over the next decade.
Speaker 1: So that's what the coalition has said, Mike. They've called
Speaker 1: the scaling back by Fortescue and others as a superflop
Speaker 1: as well. Is there any truth in their characterizations of
Speaker 1: what's going on here?
Speaker 2: Well, there is a tiny soups on of truth, I guess,
Speaker 2: but you would have to say that even by the
Speaker 2: tendentious standards of Australia's climate war, was O'Brien's release was
Speaker 2: exception in its misrepresentation of the facts. For a start,
Speaker 2: Labor is not forcing baseload energy out of the grid.
Speaker 2: What's happening is coal plants are closing because they're old,
Speaker 2: they're breakdown prone and they're uncompetitive with renewables. So that's
Speaker 2: the story there. Second point, Forrest has not abandoned green
Speaker 2: hydrogen at all, although as mentioned, he's decided against following
Speaker 2: through with a couple of things. He's not going to
Speaker 2: be going ahead with a memorandum of understanding with the
Speaker 2: energy company AGL to make hydrogen at the site of
Speaker 2: the old Ladell coal power station near Newcastle. But his
Speaker 2: company remains committed to several major projects in the United States,
Speaker 2: in Norway, in Brazil, where he has access to cheaper electricity.
Speaker 2: His company is also pushing ahead with an electorallyzer plant
Speaker 2: in Gladstone and Queensland and a pilot plant in the
Speaker 2: Pilbra which aims to begin producing green iron from next year. So,
Speaker 2: in other words, they will use hydrogen to refine iron
Speaker 2: or turn it into iron, and then ship that much
Speaker 2: more valuable product. Furthermore, Forrest's company was never in line
Speaker 2: for any funding under the hydrogen Headstart program. The government
Speaker 2: has yet to decide who's getting money under the program,
Speaker 2: so far from having collapsed, it hasn't even started yet.
Speaker 1: So Mike, where does that lead the government's hydrogen plan.
Speaker 1: It's full billion dollar hydrogen plan. If the market walks
Speaker 1: away from hydrogen, does that undermine the government's plans on this, Well, it.
Speaker 2: Would if the market was walking away. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: it is. I think the market is actually just walking
Speaker 2: in a slightly different direction. So the Energy and Climate
Speaker 2: Minister Chris Pohen has reaffirmed the government's commitment to hydrogen
Speaker 2: and the quote was reports of the death of the
Speaker 2: green hydrogen industry are greatly exaggerated, was the way he
Speaker 2: put it. He claims that there are two hundred billion
Speaker 2: dollars worth of investment schemes in the pipeline, So there
Speaker 2: will be a future for hydrogen, possibly just a slightly
Speaker 2: different one.
Speaker 1: So as things stand at the moment, the opposition has
Speaker 1: committed to nuclear, the government has committed to renewables, with
Speaker 1: hydrogen being a significant part of the mix. Mik, what
Speaker 1: does all this mean for the political debate on anychy
Speaker 1: polsy as we head towards the next election. Does all
Speaker 1: of this get us any closer than net zero?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, let's not be unduly negative here. Net
Speaker 2: zero is getting close. So we're putting in lots more
Speaker 2: wind and solar transmissions proving to be a bit of
Speaker 2: a problem. We're moving a bit slower than we should have.
Speaker 2: The prices of renewables are still too high, but progress
Speaker 2: is meeting made. As for the coalition's plans for nuclear,
Speaker 2: it may be some experts tell me not all that
Speaker 2: you know a couple of decades down the track, there
Speaker 2: will be a niche role for nukes, but it's not
Speaker 2: the answer to everything, just like hydrogen wasn't the answer
Speaker 2: to everything. In any case, there's good reason to suspect
Speaker 2: that the coalition's nuclear plan is as much an active
Speaker 2: sabotage as a climate policy. What it actually appears to
Speaker 2: be endeavoring to do is to keep us using fossil
Speaker 2: fuels for as long as possible, and even if that
Speaker 2: is in the outright intent, it is certainly creating a
Speaker 2: lot of uncertainty, which obviously investors don't like uncertainty. In
Speaker 2: the case of hydrogen, I guess we can say that
Speaker 2: the hype of some years ago has now been subject
Speaker 2: to a dose of reality. So, you know, we won't
Speaker 2: use hydrogen for a number of things we thought we might.
Speaker 2: We won't use it for home heating and cooking. We
Speaker 2: probably won't use it for transport. But if we use
Speaker 2: it where we make it, it still has big potential
Speaker 2: for you know, turning iron or into iron balk side
Speaker 2: into a luma, for producing fertilizers, explosive things like that.
Speaker 2: But the prospects of you know, exporting it around the
Speaker 2: world and around the country. Those are not looking quite
Speaker 2: as prospective as they were. So in a nutshell when
Speaker 2: it comes to hydrogen, things are not as good as promised,
Speaker 2: But nor are they as bad as they seem if
Speaker 2: you believe you know the opposition and the other naysayers.
Speaker 1: Mirk, Thanks for your time, Thanks for yours. Also in
Speaker 1: the news today, Hamas says it's chief political leader, Ismael Hanier,
Speaker 1: has been killed in Iran during a raid on his residence.
Speaker 1: Hanier has been the face of Hamas's international diplomacy during
Speaker 1: the war in Gaza, where Hannie's family's home was destroyed
Speaker 1: in an Israeli air strike in November that killed several
Speaker 1: of his family members. No one has yet claimed responsibility
Speaker 1: for the assassination, but suspicion immediately fell on Israel, and
Speaker 1: inflation in Australia rose to three point eight percent in
Speaker 1: June according to the latest figures. It comes ahead of
Speaker 1: the Reserve Bank's meeting next week where board members will
Speaker 1: decide on the official interest rate, which is currently four
Speaker 1: point thirty five percent. I'm Daniel James. Thanks for listening.