Australia has abundant sunshine and a vast desert. It can be said that it is one of the best places to develop hydrogen production from solar energy and renewable energy. However, Australia is also a big mining country. How much green energy does it need to build to meet its own net zero demand?
Australia's economy has traditionally relied on natural resources, with iron ore accounting for nearly a third of total exports, while coal and natural gas to Asia and India make up a quarter of Australia's exports. As countries move towards net zero or less coal, Australia is bound to need to find new sources of revenue.
The University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, Princeton University, and the Nous Group consultancy have outlined a range of possible scenarios for a 2050 net zero target. Even without the introduction of new nuclear power, renewable energy would generate enough power for Australia to use and create 1-1.3 million new jobs, the first interim report said.
This is also because various means of transportation and equipment are electrified, so energy demand will not increase with population growth. However, transformation also requires more capital, which is 50-70% higher than sticking to fossil fuels.
In the future, the demand for large-scale solar power plants and battery storage plants will increase. To replace current energy exports, Australia needs to increase the number of renewable energy installations by about 40 times, requiring about 132 GW of onshore wind power, 42 GW of offshore wind power and a total of 1.9 TW of solar farms. The report also outlines five mega-scale solar farms, each about the size of Tasmania.
Certain carbon capture and storage technologies will also be needed in the future to help industries that cannot fully decarbonize, and the country’s 15 1018 joules worth of energy exports will also need to switch to hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia unless cheaper energy storage and transport options are developed to commercial scale . Australia can already process iron and aluminium ore through renewable energy to export clean refined metals.
Obviously Australia will face huge challenges in the future, including all types of materials, manpower and logistics, and all infrastructure such as electrolysis, processing, and transportation carried out on a large scale. In addition, environmental and humanistic issues cannot be ignored. First of all, electrolysis of hydrogen requires a lot of fresh water, which may be a bit much for Australia with a relatively dry climate. The vast land in the Australian outback seems uninhabited at first glance but developers have to note that Australia passed the Aboriginal Titles Act in 1993.
（Image：Flickr/Bureau of Land Management CC BY 2.0）