Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the word's largest hydrogen equipment manufacturing facilities is planned for Gladstone. Recently, Andrew Forrest visited Gladstone and announced that his company, Fortescue Future Industry, FFI, would build a first stage plant at Gladstone. This initial stage 1 will cost $114 million or thereabouts and will create 120 construction jobs and 53 operational jobs. A start date is January-February 2022, not that far away.

The coalition government, in addition, is providing $2.17 million through the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, to support the $10.5 million project for the Stanwell Corporation Ltd study into large-scale hydrogen electrolysis and liquefaction at the facility in Gladstone. A further $5 million was put forward by our federal government, announced by the Deputy Prime Minister in Gladstone in May 2021. Under stage 2 and through to stage 6 of the FFI plan, more than 5,000 new jobs are expected to be created, adding $4.2 billion in hydrogen exports. Because of projects like these, the Morrison-Joyce government has guaranteed a prosperous future for regional workers and their families in our community.

There are various methods of producing hydrogen, and they are put into colour codes. Depending on the type of production used, different colours are assigned to the hydrogen. Green hydrogen is made by using clean electricity from surplus renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, powering electrolysis of water, which emits carbon dioxide in the process. Blue hydrogen is produced mainly from natural gas, using a process called 'steam reforming'. That brings together natural gas and heated water to form steam. The output is hydrogen and also hydrogen dioxide as a by-product. That means carbon capture and storage is essential to trap and store this carbon.

Grey hydrogen is created from natural gas or methane, using steam and methane reformation, but without capturing the green gases made in the process. Brown hydrogen is used with brown or black coal in the hydrogen-making process. Any hydrogen made from fossil fuels through the process of— (Time expired)