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Thedifficulty of building large scale hydrogen export projects has been broughtinto sharp focus after a multi-billion dollar Pilbara proposal was knocked backon environmental grounds.

FederalEnvironment Minister Sussan Ley ruled against an expanded proposal in which the proposed AsianRenewable Energy Hub would produce renewable hydrogen as ammonia to be shipped to export markets.

Anoriginal proposal by entity NW Interconnected Power was approved in December2020 to export power via a subsea cable, but the amended plan suggested around250 shipments annually of ammonia.

Eitherway, the production of power would have been driven by renewable energy.

Forhydrogen production, the electricity would be run through electrolysers inwater, while the subsea cable would have directly dispatched the power.

Morethan 20,000 hectares of land was to be cleared to make way for wind turbinesand solar panels, out of a 660,000 hectare development envelope, with 15gigawatts of generation capacity in the first stage.

That’sabout three times the generating capacity in Western Australia’s main SouthWest grid,

Theproject’s partners include Vestas, CWP Global and InterContinentalEnergy, and the reported cost of the development has been as high as $50 billion.

Thedevelopment was given major project status by the federal government in October2020.

Butin a decision last week, Ms Ley noted the project’s impact on the Eighty-Mile Beach wetlands, which are Ramsar listed as a wetland of international importance.

“Theminister concluded that the proposal would have unacceptable impacts on mattersof national environmental significance,” a spokesperson said.

“Thisincluded impacts on the ecological character of the declared Eighty-mile BeachRamsar site and migratory species, including seven listed threatened speciesand an internationally significant population of waterbird.

“Theminister found the marine component of the infrastructure corridor woulddisrupt tidal movements and processes and this would seriously impact thehabitats and lifecycle of the native species dependent upon the wetland andaccordingly the ecological character of the Eighty-mile Beach Ramsar siteitself.

“Anyfuture amended proposal would be a matter for the proponent.”

Aspokesperson for AREH said the consortium had been notified late last week.

“Weare now working to understand the minister’s concerns, and will engage furtherwith the minister and her department as we continue to work on the detaileddesign and engineering aspects of the project,” the spokesperson said.

“TheAREH project represents a significant economic and clean energy opportunity forAustralia, as confirmed by the Commonwealth Government’s conferral of majorproject status for AREH in October 2020.

“Thesame status was granted by the Western Australian government inmid-2018.

“Theproject developers intend to utilise the Pilbara’s world-class solar and windpower to produce hydrogen and derivatives for export to major Asian marketsalready committed to quickly decarbonise their economies, and to offer optionsfor greening mining activities and adding value to mineral resources producedin the Pilbara.”

StateHydrogen Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the decision was surprising, made in a short timeframe, and had seemingly little engagement with the proponent.

“Managingenvironmental impacts of large-scale projects is extremely important, but it isdisappointing that in this case, the proponent does not appear to have beengiven an opportunity to refine the project or respond to concerns,” Ms MacTiernan said.

“Giventhe importance to the environment of reducing dependence on fossil fuels, Iwould have expected more interest by the federal agency to work through theissue with the proponent.

“Wewill be seeking further clarification from the federal government on theirposition on this matter.

“Renewablehydrogen presents enormous opportunities for our country, as a job-creatingfuture industry and to decarbonise the world’s economy.

“Ifthe federal government is serious about this opportunity, it needs to workcooperatively with industry and state government to progress major projects.”

Thepotential for environmental and land use problems to disrupt hydrogen projectshas been raised by industry leaders in recent weeks.

FormerWoodside Petroleum chief executive Peter Coleman told a recent Australia-Korea Business Council event that land use would be a major challenge for green hydrogen, although the business has been working on it’s own proposals.

“Ifyou were going to replace the energy equivalent of Pluto LNG with solar, you’dhave to cover the entire area of greater Sydney- not Sydney CBD- with solarpanels,” Mr Coleman said.