Picture this: green hydrogen plants next to green steelworks to...

Picture this: green hydrogen plants next to green steelworks to boost efficiency and kickstart both industries (theconversation.com)


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.

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."

Beauty.