World’s biggest renewables hub planned for Australian desert
By Mike Foley
Plans for a $100 billion wind and solar project – the biggest of its kind – in the Australian desert have raised hopes that US President-elect Donald Trump’s anti-green agenda could shift major investment from the United States to the rest of the world.
The Western Green Energy Hub would build 3000 wind turbines and 6 million solar panels in Western Australia, starting at the South Australian border and stretching west for hundreds of kilometres.
The Western Green Energy Hub has lodged plans to build the world’s biggest renewables hub in Western Australia. Credit: Bloomberg
The project would take decades to build and, if completed, would deliver 70 gigawatts of renewable energy generation – about the same capacity as the entire eastern seaboard’s electricity grid.
Power from the project would be used for hydrogen production and potentially to supply WA’s state grid and mine sites throughout the state.
It would produce 3.5 million tonnes a year of green hydrogen via an emissions-free process that uses renewable energy to release hydrogen from water. The fuel could replace fossil fuels in industries such as transport and electricity generation.
Multinational project developers InterContinental Energy and CWP Global lodged their plans with the WA government this week. Federal environment approval will almost certainly be needed as well.
Western Green Energy Hub representatives declined to comment on the project before all its government applications are lodged. But the project received a boost in September, when Korea’s largest energy utility, KEPCO, agreed to collaborate on its development.
Trump has said he would “terminate” the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is providing $567 billion in financial assistance to green industries.
Johns Hopkins University think tank the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab said following Trump’s election that a US retreat on clean energy policy could open up an $80 billion opportunity for international markets.
Australia’s Investor Group on Climate Change, a coalition of 104 local and global funds including AustralianSuper, HESTA, BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard, has said its members could enjoy greater green technology investment opportunities if Trump pulled back on the subsidies on offer in the US.
However, Grattan Institute energy and climate change deputy program director Alison Reeve said Trump might not live up to his rhetoric on the IRA because many projects were located in Republican states, potentially pressuring him to maintain investment and jobs.
What’s more, global hydrogen demand could shrink dramatically if Trump delivered on his vow to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and cancelled US emissions reduction targets, and other countries responded by reducing their green ambitions.
The Albanese government has declared it wants to turn Australia into a hydrogen superpower and pledged $2 billion in funding for the nascent industry, backed with an expected $6 billion or more in tax credits for companies that enter large-scale commercial production.
Despite this support, no green hydrogen production is under way and the industry has suffered various setbacks.
Mining magnate Andrew Forrest has cut hundreds of jobs in his business and ditched his hydrogen production target as the company focuses on bringing down the cost of production, while Origin Energy has abandoned its hydrogen ventures, including its proposed Hunter Valley Hydrogen Hub in Newcastle.
Reeve said a correction to the initial optimism about hydrogen’s prospects had been coming for some time “as some of the projects have figured out that hydrogen is a little harder than they were expecting”.
She said that to be considered likely, projects must have funding for construction and buyers lined up for their hydrogen.
“Australia talks a big game about it, but we have to recognise that we’re coming off a base that is orders of magnitude smaller than the superpower vision,” Reeve said.
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