Certification standards under scrutiny as Australia sets sights on green hydrogen export

In a study, Monash engineers have looked at how well Australia’s main electricity market supports truly green hydrogen. The work is published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The researchers used life cycle assessment (LCA) to examine how the three key principles that underpin many international hydrogen certification schemes hold up within Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).

These principles—known as the “three pillars”—require that hydrogen is produced using newly added clean energy, that supply and demand are aligned in real time, and that the energy used comes from the same region where the hydrogen is produced.

As countries around the world develop certification systems to ensure that renewable-powered “green hydrogen” meets strong climate standards, the study raises important questions about how some of these rules perform when applied to real-world conditions.

Key findings:

• Time matching, which requires hydrogen production to align with periods of renewable electricity generation, can effectively reduce grid-related emissions. However, strict compliance demands highly flexible operations and more infrastructure—leading to higher costs and a rise in embodied emissions.
• Annual matching, a simpler and less stringent alternative, may help the industry scale up in the short term but does not deliver the lowest emissions outcomes.
• The embodied emissions—mostly associated with overseas-manufactured plant and equipment—will become increasingly significant as the hydrogen sector matures, yet are largely excluded from current certification rules.
• In a positive finding, the study supports the exclusion of geographic correlation in the Australian Guarantee of Origin Scheme. The analysis showed that such restrictions could undermine the broader benefits of shared, inter-regional electricity flows in the NEM.

Lead author Dr. Graham Palmer, from Monash’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said certification gaps could hinder Australia’s ability to meet international standards and secure reliable markets for its green hydrogen exports.

“Governments are facing a real challenge in balancing environmental stringency with the need to support a nascent industry. This study shows that some well-intentioned certification rules can undermine mitigation efforts when viewed through a whole-of-system lens,” Dr. Palmer said.

“The findings underscore the importance of evidence-based policy design, especially as Australia and its trading partners move toward a more formalized hydrogen certification landscape.”

The third pillar, additionality, was not assessed in this study. Researchers note that questions of whether hydrogen production stimulates new renewable investment are more appropriately addressed through policy and market design, rather than life cycle modeling.