Last February I sent this email to our energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg.
As expected I received no response... It’s up to industry. These politicians don’t know an opportunity when it’s staring them directly in the face.
Hi Josh,
Just wanted to take a moment to draw your attention to a small Australia start up that have the ability to shine on a world stage, Hazer Group, Hazer is an acronym for
Hydrogen
And
Zero
Emissions
Research.
This company have been listed on the ASX for a few years after spinning out of the University of Western Australia. They are currently moving from lab scale to pilot scale process wise and developing a technology that adds significant value to some of Australia’s largest resources while reducing the GHG emissions across a range of sectors including electricity, transportation and mining.
The core of the process is an iron ore catalytic reaction which reduces methane to hydrogen and graphite carbon. The key difference between this process and other similar processes is that the carbon which is generally emitted as CO2 is transformed to graphite. The process due to the use of a low cost iron ore catalyst is able to produce both hydrogen and graphite at a significantly lower price than current methods.
Hydrogen is a mass produced industrial gas which has a large (US$120B worldwide) existing market as a transitional product when producing fertiliser and methanol as well as many refining and other industrial processes, all emit high levels of CO2. Outside of the large existing markets there are several potential high growth markets which have a profound effect on the worlds GHG emissions.
Transportation; fuel cells running on hydrogen produce zero emissions, the largest barrier to adoption has historically been economics as the only GHG free method of producing hydrogen was electrolysis which costs around $6/kg. Hazer will be able to halve this cost which will mean that it is cheaper to run a vehicle on hydrogen than petrol or diesel, a major shift happens when the green way of doing something becomes the cheaper way. Fuel cells in modern vehicles are around 60% efficient, internal combustion engines are about 30% therefore the overall energy required actually reduces when switching to hydrogen. Globally the transportation industry creates 14% of total GHG emissions which could be reduced to near zero.
Mining; other than the transportation benefits as outlined above there are some large opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of mining operators by using hydrogen as an energy source. There is also a unique opportunity to add value to the Australian Iron Ore industry. Over the last few years there has been a lot of focus on the clean production of steel from iron ore and all studies seen to point towards either CCS or hydrogen upgradation of iron ore. Over 5% of global emissions come from steel production, with hydrogen used to convert the iron ore to steel this can be done without emissions.
Graphite is a commodity which exists in both natural and synthetic forms, the natural graphite is mined and upgraded like many other minerals with existing production mainly coming from less developed countries such as China and Africa. Synthetic graphite is a premium quality graphite which is produced at a high relative price point from petroleum coke which produces a lot of GHG. The current world market for graphite is around US$15B. The main existing applications are Refractories, lubricants, steel production and batteries, of the uses the battery markets is the one with the highest future growth due to the shift towards electronics and EV’s
Concrete; Graphite has been proven to improve concrete strength and studies have suggested that concrete consumption can be reduced by as much as 50% if strengthened by the addition of carbon nanotubes (Hazer make this morphology), with the cement industry creating 7% of worldwide GHG emissions further opportunity exists for significant reductions by developing this technology.
Hazer are in a position technology wise to literally change the face of emissions both locally and worldwide while improving economics. What can government do to ensure the success of companies like these?
Regards
Michael
(20min delay)