Bundaberg Regional Council to vote on hydrogen powered garbage trucks

The same region that’s soon to be home to a large-scale hydrogen plant could soon play a leadership role in hydrogen powered garbage collection if a grant is approved. Here’s what the council will vote on.

Bundaberg’s garbage collection fleet could soon have two new hydrogen powered if council have a grant approved, next week council will vote to open EOI’s for the pending project.

Bundaberg could soon be one of the centres paving the way towards regional Net-Zero carbon emissions if councillors agree to open expressions of interest for a project next week.

Councillors will vote in their ordinary meeting to open public expressions of interest before inviting written tenders for the trial supply of hydrogen powered garbage trucks and fuel.

The motion comes after council recently applied for a grant under the Queensland Hydrogen Industry Development Fund to trial the operation of two hydrogen powered garbage trucks within council’s fleet.

Queensland has been leading the way when it comes to hydrogen and hydrogen powered vehicles.

As well as the potential trial garbage truck trial, Bundaberg’s port will soon be home to a large scale hydrogen production centre with the ability to produce up to 30,000 metric tonnes annually.

The project will allow the production of hydrogen and green ammonia for export and domestic use in Bundaberg, an investment intended to bring long term investment of more than $400 million to the area.

Further south, a Sunshine Coast-based engineering company H2H is transforming cars to be powered by the renewable, and says there’s the potential for garbage trucks and race cars to be hydrogen powered also.

Central Queensland is also soon to be home to billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forest’s new venture – the world’s largest hydrogen manufacturing facility.

The facility was heralded as a “breakthrough” for Australia’s green energy market, with estimates the plant would double green hydrogen production capacity.

Mr Artup said council had been looking at ways to position the region’s economy in the “rapidly emerging” hydrogen space.

Bundaberg Regional Council Executive Director Strategic Projects and Economic Development Coordination Ben Artup told councillors in the briefing meeting on Wednesday that the council had been looking at ways to position the region’s economy in the “rapidly emerging” hydrogen space.

“The reason for doing this is are for economic diversification, to create jobs in sustainable industries, such as renewable energy, and also to de-risk our region in terms of the future decarbonisation of the region over time,” he said.

“One way to do this is for council to play a leadership role in the trial of technologies such as hydrogen technologies and hydrogen fuel in vehicles within our fleet.

“To do this we’ve been investigating the use of hydrogen in two of our garbage trucks as a trial operation to demonstrate how our region can use technologies, such as hydrogen and hydrogen fuel as a source of powering our operations in a lower carbon environment.”

Mr Artup said for the trial to be possible council would need to “approach the market” to look at supplies that may be able to provide the technology, fuels and “know how” of how to implement the changes.

He said the matter before council was about a two-part procurement methodology which would see EOI’s and then a possible request for tender inviting supplies of hydrogen fuels.

The assessment criteria for the initial EOI will focus on suppliers who demonstrate technology and supply arrangements that meet requirements particularly around safety, value for money and environmental responsibilities.