National

Picture this: green hydrogen plants next to green steelworks to boost efficiency and kickstart both industries
Source: The Conversation, Changlong Wang, Andrew Feitz, Marcus Haynes, Stuart Walsh, Zhehan Weng

The race to net zero is accelerating. Just last week, United States President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled a climate pact to boost cooperation. The move signifies Australia is becoming a global leader in the renewable energy roll-out and critical mineral supply.

Australia’s rich iron ore deposits and cheap solar offer yet another way we can lead. If we locate green hydrogen plants near green steel facilities, we can shift the highly polluting steel industry away from fossil fuels.

Our new research shows co-locating plants in sun-rich, iron-rich places like Western Australia’s Pilbara and South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula can help overcome the “first mover problem” for green hydrogen: you can’t have a hydrogen industry without buyers for it and can’t have buyers without hydrogen.

How would it work? Cheap solar power would be used to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. This green hydrogen would be piped a short distance to a green steel plant, which uses hydrogen and electricity to produce iron from the ore, and then an electric arc furnace to smelt steel.

As we grapple with ways to decarbonise the steel sector, which uses 8% of the world’s energy and produces 7% of all energy-related carbon emissions, we should urgently look for opportunities like this. As a bonus, cheap power from solar and wind could make Australian-made iron and steel more competitive globally.

Why is Australia so well placed?

We’re the world’s largest iron ore exporter. Under our red dirt lies an estimated 56 billion tonnes of iron ore, as of 2021. Export earnings reached A$133 billion in 2021–22. We also profit from the current emissions-heavy way of making steel, by exporting $72 billion worth of metallurgical coal.

Australia’s potential as a green hydrogen provider is often promoted. This year’s federal budget allocated $2 billion to help make it a reality. But our distance from the rest of the world makes pipelines prohibitively expensive, and shipping hydrogen is difficult.

One solution is to use it here. Green hydrogen could make it possible to onshore more iron and steel production.

Clean steelmaking will bring major change to our iron ore exports if other countries take it up. Traditionally, 96% of our exports are the most common type of ore, hematite. But this is currently not suited to green steelmaking.

By contrast, magnetite ore only accounts for 4% of exports but can be used in hydrogen-based green steelmaking. 

Australia has vast reserves of magnetite ore, which previously hasn’t been in as much demand. But these ore bodies will become valuable under the right economic conditions.

And while we can solve steel’s carbon problem with much better recycling of this valuable material, we’ll still need new steel equivalent to about 50% of the current rate of production in 2050, due to issues with converting scrap to reusable steel and removing contaminants.

Where should we co-locate these plants?
Continue reading on The Conversation