The Race to Conquer the Hydrogen Business: The Seven Territories of Australia's Strategy

Abstract

Australia has embarked on a fast race to become the leading hydrogen provider in the Asia Pacific, supported by countries such as Japan and South Korea as firm customers. The seven territories of Australia are developing their business strategies to achieve competitiveness and a place in the race. A strategy based on a strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis has been derived from each territory, considering the current state-of-the-art hydrogen technologies and their main drivers. These strategies have been benchmarked against the Australia Council National Hydrogen Strategy and the Australia Electricity Market Operator Strategy regarding the scenario of a hydrogen superpower for Australia to become an essential player in the hydrogen market using the IBA (Interactive Bundle Analysis) framework. The seven territories’ strategies were analyzed, and a set of recommendations are derived from this analysis with the aim to reinforce each territory strategy, providing the Australian Federal Government a framework to assess which project to finance projects first and assist in de-risking them to attract private capital, which is essential for the country to become a large-scale hydrogen producer and exporter. This analysis recommends that should Australia focus on the development of blue hydrogen first and secures market share via Western Australia using steam methane reformer (SMR) and Victoria with the brown coal gasification, both fitted with the corresponding carbon capture and storage (CCS). In parallel, the Australian Federal government should incentivize Tasmania to produce green hydrogen followed by Queensland and Western Australia while other territories need to develop as per their individual strengths.