ONE OF THE prime movers behind the Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain, Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries, has reportedly withdrawn from the project over concerns supply deadlines will not be met.
The HESC is a commercial demonstration project intended to prove the viability of converting Victorian brown coal into clean hydrogen and shipping it in liquefied form to Japan from the Port of Hastings.
The project is undertaken by two consortiums, J-POWER and Sumitomo Corporation, who formed a joint-venture to produce the hydrogen via extraction from Latrobe Valley coal with carbon capture, utilisation and storage in the Bass Strait; and Japan Suiso Energy, comprised of KHI and Iwatani Corporation, who would purchase clean hydrogen from the J-POWER/Sumitomo Corporation project and be responsible for liquefaction at Hastings and shipment from Victoria to Japan.
Other participants in Australia include AGL and Marubeni while in Japan INPEX, Shell, Marubeni and ENEOS are also involved. The venture is backed by substantial funding from the Japanese, Australian and Victorian governments.
According to ESC website, initial production by 2030 was expected to be 40,000 tonnes per annum with10,000tpa made available for domestic use, whilst JSE export the remainder to Japan where it will be used to generate power for homes and industry and also be used to fuel vehicles.
However, Japanese news agency Nikkei, conveyed by Melbourne’s The Age, quoted KHI as saying it had ended its participation – which included the building and provision of the hydrogen tanker Suiso Frontier, which has made several Hastings trips – because it had become “difficult to prepare hydrogen in Australia within the deadline”.
Nikkei reported “With the completion of the demonstration test by fiscal year 2030, as originally scheduled, being an absolute requirement for ensuring competitiveness, the company has changed hydrogen procurement to domestic.
“It has also downsized its hydrogen carriers and is now steering towards a more ‘realistic’ solution.”
