Australia’s former chief scientist Alan Finkel says “binary choices” between hydrogen and electrification are not required, and both sources of clean energy will be needed in large volumes in the decades ahead.

Plans for Australia to become a hydrogen superpower were rubbished at last week’s The Australian Financial Review Energy & Climate Summit by author and academic Saul Griffith, who argued the large volumes of low cost renewable energy required to manufacture affordable “green hydrogen” gas could more efficiently be consumed as electricity.