With a view across the southern Great Barrier Reef and shrouded by state forests, it is easy to forget Gladstone is one of the most emissions-intensive places in Australia.
But the city is a major Australian producer of cement, alumina, aluminium, and ammonia, while the Gladstone Port — one of the biggest bulk commodity ports in the world — facilitates tens of billions of dollars’ worth of trade annually through its exports of products like coal and gas.
State and federal governments have earmarked the city’s future as a possible green hydrogen powerhouse.
This is something some experts and residents believe would shore up its future if a government could pull it off.
Last year Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced temporary tax credits that would see producers of green hydrogen receive $2 per kilogram of renewable hydrogen produced for a period of up to 10 years.
The Gladstone port is a major exporter of coal. (ABC News: Scout Wallen)
The initiative would cost the government an estimated $8 billion across 10 years initially, and then an average of $1.2 billion per year from 2034-35 and 2040-41.
The LNP has vowed to scrap the policy if it is elected.
Green hydrogen and Gladstone
Green hydrogen can be produced when it is extracted from water through electrolysis, which is powered by a renewable energy source.
Gladstone resident Jade Wright is a student nurse who worked as a deckhand on boats and has done maintenance work at industrial facilities.
Gladstone local Jade Wright would like to see the hydrogen industry flourish in the city. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)
Having been a teenager during Gladstone’s last boom and bust cycle from LNG in the 2010s, she is worried about the city decarbonising and what it could look like.
“The way it [the bust] changed the community in town … and the hole that was left when they left, that’s the kind of emotional stuff you don’t really hear from the technical experts,”
she said.
Ms Wright said government investment should be made to kickstart the green hydrogen industry.
“If hydrogen can’t get off the ground, the whole of Gladstone continues to struggle,” she said.
But on the other side of politics, the LNP takes a different view.
Its flagship election energy policy is to build small nuclear power plants around Australia.
One of these would be just over 100 kilometres to the west of Gladstone, near Biloela.
Local scaffolding business owner David Nunn co-founded the CQ Nuclear Alliance three years ago and believes it is the way forward.
Gladstone businessman David Nunn co-founded the CQ Nuclear Alliance. (ABC News: Jasmine Hines)
He is wary of the government support provided to the private sector for renewable projects, including for green hydrogen.
“We’ve got to run a business in the private sector. We have rules, people we have to deal with. [Then] other sectors suddenly get a free ride,”
he said.
“I support any industry that stacks up financially.”
Mr Nunn said the nuclear industry had been proven overseas, while he believed green hydrogen was still in an experimental stage.
But if Gladstone’s green hydrogen dream crumbled, and emissions-intensive industries were wound back, Ms Wright believed Gladstone would suffer.
“Without the jobs, without the heavy industry, as a town, we’re kind of flailing,” she said.
Fortescue has the largest hydrogen electrolyser manufacturing plant in the country in Gladstone. (Supplied: Queensland government)
CQUniversity Professor Jonathan Love said the developing industry would need incentives to become competitive and give investors confidence.
Professor Love said Gladstone had the potential to be a major exporter of hydrogen, but only if the industry was incentivised by the government.
“It’s just going to put a major handbrake on the industry. Investment will stall and it’s going to hold things back substantially,”
he said.
“If Australia is too late getting there then there’ll already be a market that the likes of Japan and South Korea will be tapping into.”
A hydrogen electrolyser. (ABC Illawarra: Tim Fernandez)
A paper published by the Nature Energy journal earlier this year tracked 190 green hydrogen projects globally, finding only seven per cent were completed on time.
It found to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, production needed to grow 380-fold and double each year.
“That’s where these incentives are needed,”
Professor Love said.
He said current production methods using natural gas and coal were carbon-intensive, and green hydrogen was essential to meeting net zero emissions by 2050.
Green hydrogen already in use
Renewable hydrogen is already being used in the city’s gas network, while billionaire Andrew Forrest’s company Fortescue is manufacturing hydrogen electrolysers in Gladstone.
The next stage of the company’s project will see the electrolysers produce green hydrogen.
An electrolyser built by Fortescue. (Facebook: Glenn Butcher MP)
A Fortescue spokesperson said incentives were critical to developing a green iron industry, which required large amounts of green hydrogen as a fuel source.
“This kind of government support will help attract large-scale investment, foster innovation, and secure thousands of new jobs in advanced manufacturing,” it said.
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