Coming events may cast their shadows before them, but when it comes to hydrogen, and now ammonia, the future remains difficult to predict. And there are a lot of red herrings. There is enough political support from Japan and Australia to get an export hydrogen industry started in Australia, but projects such as those in Gladstone in Queensland won’t be fully or even largely green at the outset. There is little or no possibility of a difference-making domestic market in the foreseeable future. The first market for the ammonia will probably be to replace some coal in coal generation. The hope is that developing supply first and using it for coal replacement will allow enough time for the demand technology, eg ammonia fuelled turbines and hydrogen for steel, to prove its technical and ultimately commercial viability. Green ammonia is much cheaper to transport than hydrogen and per gigajoule costs only about 10% more to manufacture.
Many countries/regions in the world, including in Asia, will be able to manufacture their own hydrogen or ammonia at broadly comparable costs to Australia. That said, some Australia regions such as Gladstone and north west WA have enough wind and solar which may achieve a 60-70% electrolyser capacity factor if built at sufficient scale. Essentially, the intermittency of wind and solar adds probably 50% to the cost of green ammonia […]