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Comment by defrost

14 days ago

I'd argue that various industry captains in Australia are going all in on hydrogen (eg: Andrew Forrest most notably and a couple of long haul fixed route trucking contractors)

(see, eg: https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-green-hydrogen-goal-ne... )

and that the Liberal|National Coalition and Australian Labor Party (the two major political wings in Australian politics) are rudderless in the sense of appearing to have plans but neither are leading strongly.

I like Hydrogen|Ammonia, and the biggest drive there is from the major billion tonne per annum mining producers that are converting massive cattle stations to solar farms for 24|7 energy to use in adjacent mining operations .. but these are not Australian Government projects ... although the .gov.au spin is happy to ride along and appear to be driving.

> these are not Australian Government projects

Imo, there's no reason for them to be.

A lot of the R&D in the Hydrogen space was done by private companies like Eneos, Idemitsu Kosan, Hokkaido Electric, SK Group, Saudi Aramco, BP, GE, Siemens, Reliance, etc.

Just by supporting private sector champions through tax breaks, R&D credits, seed funding, and PLI you are building an ecosystem.

Even China does the same thing in the EV and Solar space, by supporting private sector companies like BYD, DAQI, LONGi, Jinko, Trina, and Canadian Solar.

  • Sure.

    As said before, Australia (as in the Australian Federal Goverment) is rudderless on effective policy .. fortuneatly we have some people working in effective directions, and a number of others doing their best to upset such plans and throw anchors arrears and logs of wood in front.