Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I would like to address the subject of hydrogen and green steel, and the government's $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program and what that means for the people of Gladstone in my electorate of Flynn, and to pose some questions to the government, to those people opposite who are listening.

As we all know, the government is relentlessly pursuing this argument of net zero by 2050. As I said, the production of green hydrogen, green steel and those sorts of things are all relevant to my electorate of Flynn, because Gladstone has been nominated as a hydrogen hub—and we know that there are pilot projects there.

The Stanwell Corporation are proposing to produce 5,000 tonnes of ammonia, which is 882 tonnes of hydrogen, and they have said in their proposal that this will require three gigawatts of renewable energy—wind turbines and solar panels. So what does this actually mean? The Gladstone coal-fired power station is capable of producing 1.6 gigawatts of energy. So the reality is that this small pilot project will require approximately double the generating capacity of the Gladstone power station in solar panels and wind turbines to happen.

The Gladstone Ports Corporation have proposed a four-million-tonne hydrogen precinct in Gladstone. They said in their presentation a year ago that that will require 110 gigawatts of renewable energy. To put that into perspective, 110 gigawatts of renewable energy is approximately double the entire generating capacity of the Australian grid. They said in their presentation that it will require 10,000 wind turbines, 2½ thousand solar panels and 45,000 megalitres of fresh water every year to achieve this.

Before me I have the World Steel Association's fact sheet on hydrogen and green steel, and the hydrogen that might be required to convert the world's steel industry away from coal. It says here:

Around 70 Mt of dedicated hydrogen are produced today, 76% from natural gas and almost all the rest (23%) from coal. Less than 0.1% of global dedicated hydrogen production today comes from water electrolysis. If all current dedicated hydrogen production were produced through water electrolysis (using water and electricity to create hydrogen), this would result in an annual electricity demand of 3,600 TWh—more than the annual electricity generation of the European Union.

This proposal is insane, because, of the hydrogen that is used in the world today, very little of it is used in the production of green steel. The fact is that the steel industry uses 1.1 billion tonnes of coal, and if we were to replace that with hydrogen we would have to multiply that electricity generation requirement—from wind turbines, solar panels and so forth—by a factor of 100.

The question I pose to the government and to those opposite is: how is this possibly economically responsible management in Australia, when we've got people who are living in cars, people who are living in tents and people who can't afford to send their children to football practice and netball practice because of the cost of living? It is all related to the cost of energy.