Toyota have NFI, every month for the last 3 years they have been announcing a new engine that will destroy EV’s, where is it? Their hydrogen car was a complete flop and they have stopped producing them. Their only EV is rubbish. They have ignored EV’s and are paying the price with declining sales. With all their debt I am not sure how much longer they will be around, EV demand is only going to increase with the introduction of a lot of new models and lots of variety in 2025. Keep with your smelly, cancer causing ICE engine and in a few years you will be stuck with something no one wants .
Thanks to closing all our cost effecient coal fired power stations & replacing them with them with intermittent & expensive wind & solar power platforms, I would like to ask where we are going to stump up the “bandwidth” to charge all these additional EVs ?
This is beyond idiotic.
Yeah, I thought maybe he’d gone off and had a Damascus, read a few real publications, but nope. Hibernation under the bridge, come back hungry. Best not feed.
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I won’t feed anymore. I am sort of use to it as I have the same arguments with my ignorant, Trump loving, climate change denying brother in law.
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That’s gotta be hard, my sympathies
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The solar panels on my roof do a great job keeping our two EVs charged.
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As I’ve said many many times, the only way that coal power plants are “low cost” is if they can spread their high operational costs by running flat out all day. Wind and solar have minute operational costs in comparison, so can deliver far cheaper electricity which pushes coal out of large periods of the daily energy market. This forces coal plants to pay for their operating costs over a smaller portion of the day, pushing prices up for that period.
Solar is cheap. Wind is pretty cheap. They are not going to get bulldozed just to make coal’s archaic business case more viable.
Coal needs to pay for:
- the coal, including all the infrastructure, transport, mine expansions, wages and rehabilitation for the mine
- the operation and maintenance of the plant.
- recapitalisation of the plant, with the youngest plants approaching 50 years in operation and needing major investment to return to reliable service.
This is a huge cost. Coal isn’t cheap anymore. If you wanted to shift back to a coal based energy market, you’d need to pour billions of $$$ into the sector. No investment fund is going to push that money into a dying sector when renewables give a far far better return on investment.
And nuclear has the same problem. The only way to make a capital intensive generator viable is to run the asset flat out. That’s just not going to happen in a reality that includes negative priced electricity and cost effective battery storage.
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From the Financial Review:
Hydrogen backers push ahead as Qld flagship project crumbles
**Angela Macdonald-Smith**Senior resources writer
Feb 3, 2025 – 5.58pm
Green hydrogen ventures in Western Australia and Tasmania are defiantly pushing ahead with their multibillion-dollar project plans, even after Queensland’s most advanced project collapsed due to a state government decision to reject a $1 billion-plus funding request.
More than 140 people were laid off from the Central Queensland Hydrogen Project, according to one source, after the Crisafulli government shocked the industry by saying it would not support the further development of the CQ-H2 venture that was due to reach financial close in mid-2025.
Queensland Treasurer and Energy Minister David Janetzki said the renewable hydrogen investment “does not align” with the government’s expectations for generators to provide affordable, reliable and sustainable power for Queenslanders.
BP’s proposed hydrogen and clean fuels precinct in Kwinana, WA.
Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who is overseeing a $4 billion federal government funding program that was expected to support the CQ-H2 project, described the Queensland decision as “surprising and disappointing”. He noted the project would create nearly 9000 jobs and generate $8.9 billion for the economy in the Gladstone region.
The venture, led by Queensland state-owned generator Stanwell Corporation, is considering the government’s announcement and “also reviewing its involvement in other hydrogen initiatives”, Stanwell said.
The crumbling of the ambitious CQ-H2 project, in which heavyweight Japanese investors such as Marubeni and Iwatani were involved, is the latest blow to Australia’s nascent green hydrogen sector, which has been struggling with high construction costs and the slower than expected emergence of customer demand for the emissions-free fuel.
Last year, Fortescue Metals Group scrapped a 2030 target for producing green hydrogen, while Origin Energy walked away from a proposed project in Newcastle. Last month, Woodside Energy said it would delay a hydrogen venture in the US, and last year ditched early-stage hydrogen plans in Tasmania and New Zealand.
Yuri project a year late
“The reality is it is really hard,” said Fiona Simon, head of the Australian Hydrogen Council, pointing to the reliance on government policies to help close the commercial gap between production costs for the green fuel and standard fuel prices.
“We’ve been coming down from a peak on the hype curve when maybe everyone saw their future in hydrogen through a period of reckoning with the practical realities of what’s involved here.”
Ms Simon described the Crisafulli government’s decision as “a serious disappointment” but insisted that does not make it a harbinger of doom for the industry as a whole.
Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest green hydrogen project already in construction, the $87 million Yuri project in WA’s Pilbara region backed by France’s Engie and Japan’s Mitsui, is running about a year late, Engie has revealed. Construction of the project, involving a 10-megawatt electrolyser powered by solar PV and a battery system, was due to complete in 2024 but is now expected to be finished at the end of this year.
“Yuri is a complex technology pilot project and faces many of the equipment and logistical challenges of any new industry,” said Graeme York, Engie ANZ chief operating officer for generation.
“We will complete the committed phase of the project and share valuable lessons that will help ease the pathway to commercial scale.”
The CQ-H2 news means that two of the six ventures short-listed by the Albanese government for funding under the Hydrogen Headstart initiative have essentially foundered.
While four others remain in contention, they are still awaiting an announcement from Canberra on the winners of the funding, which was due in late 2024. The industry is also closely watching the passage through the Senate of the bill to enact the government’s hydrogen production tax incentive, which would allow developers to access subsidies of $2 per kilogram of green hydrogen produced.
“Across our global portfolio we are focused on achieving cost reductions to counteract the inflation that has hit all projects globally over the past two years,” said Ignacio Hernandez, chief executive of HIF Asia Pacific, whose green fuels project in Tasmania is on the Headstart short-list.
“In that context, Australian government support such as the proposed hydrogen production tax credit remains key, and we hope for a smooth passage of that bill as soon as possible.”
‘We remain committed’
HIF remains committed to the Tasmanian project and is working towards a target of 2026 for a final investment decision, Mr Hernandez said.
Murchison Green Hydrogen, a huge project planned in Western Australia’s mid-west, is still targeting a final investment decision (FID) at the end of 2026, said a spokesman for the venture, which is owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.
“Despite slower than expected offtake market development, we remain committed to the project, with funding through to FID secured via CIP’s Energy Transition Fund, and continue to work with key offtake partners with whom we have executed offtake heads of agreements,” he said.
“Murchison Green Hydrogen is well positioned to navigate the complexities of large-scale green hydrogen, and we continue to see potential for green hydrogen and ammonia in Australia and globally.”
A spokesman for BP Australia, which is planning a green hydrogen project at its Kwinana site, said it was continuing with its work but declined to comment further. Orica, which was working with Origin in the Hunter hydrogen hub, said it was continuing to evaluate the viability for commercial-scale renewable hydrogen at Newcastle.
KEPCO Australia, a Korean-owned venture whose proposed hydrogen project in Newcastle was also short-listed for Headstart support, is continuing to evaluate the project, said chief financial officer Jaewan Ahn.
The CQ-H2 venture, which involves renewable hydrogen, electrolysis and ammonia production, has already received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and from the Queensland government for feasibility and engineering studies. Incitec Pivot last year signed an initial agreement to join the project, but Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Co was reported in November to have exited the venture due to high costs.
Mr Bowen said green hydrogen played to Australia’s strengths and the government was “unapologetic about pursuing an industry that is recognised as having an important role in the future of manufacturing and energy in Australia, and globally.
“Government support in developing hydrogen opportunities around the country provides additional certainty for projects. However, how they progress ultimately remains a commercial decision for the parties involved.”
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You mean the car company that basically invented the hybrid technology that reduce emission, improved efficiency and became the gold standard for manufacturers even 20 years after its introduction.
Yep…they’ve got no idea.
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coal must be run day and night.
Nuclear must be run day and night
Gas can be turned on and off easily.
Hydro power and GAS along with solar and Wind should be the way forward.
Battery storage is still a long way from where it needs to be to only have solar/wind power.
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So how come China is approving 2 coal fired power stations each week and has over 1000 stations in comparison to our 18?
You do also realise that all of the panels and parts to create solar and wind farms come from China who burn our coal to make them?
Coal based energy costs has been increasing largely due to the owners neglecting stations due to the governments push to replace coal capacity. Clearly China prove that is can be a low cost, high energy return source.
The only thing that should be replacing Coal is Gas or Nuclear. Renewables have a place, but not anymore that the % they represent now.
Don’t know about you, but I’d rather not butcher our natural landscape for 12,000 wind turbines that will need to be replaced and buried within 20 years anyway. That’s a ■■■■ load of destruction for a intermittent, short life technology.
I did a count recently of the battery storage and hydro projects which are going to be constructed over the next 3 years. It was something like 25GW of generation capacity, for at least 2 hours of storage. That’s about half the east coast demand.
We are in the lull before the storm, not appreciating what is coming because we haven’t seen it yet. But the pipeline of projects is real and the impact they will have on the energy market will be enormous. They’ll quickly put a floor on energy prices during the day and make larger solar deployment far more financially dominant.
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2 hours storage isn’t long enough, need days. Need a solution like Gas to turn on when have bad weather - low wind/sun.
Part of the answer needs to be more people having batteries at home. Or incentives like better prices when sell back during peak times, that can only do with personal batteries, Sydney have this.
China is building coal plants, largely due to desperation to keep up with rising demand. Not because it’s the cheapest or best option. They are also building the most hydro, gas, wind, solar and nuclear of any country.
For China, costs aren’t a huge factor. They just need megawatts from any and all sources.
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What is India power plant additions like?
mostly coal? or renewables too.
Around 56-60% fossil fuel and 40% renewable. They are still ramping up coal stations and haven’t committed to ever phase it out.
They’re pushing for around a 50-50% split of fossil and renewable sources by 2030…but we’ll see how that pans out.
Australia is ■■■■■■■ bat ■■■■ crazy if it thinks 100% if achievable or even a good idea.
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2 hours takes out the evening peak pricing.
Extrapolate that accelerating rate of installation by 5 years. Then 10 years.
This change is real and it is happening fast.
And we don’t need days, we need a broad variety of generation options, a lot of storage options, some gas backup and a few intensive industries that can be paid to slow down for 3-4 days a year when things get tight.
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Australia isn’t targeting 100%. It’s more like 85-90% in the medium term. The shift to 100% will be a problem faced in a future including substantially different technologies and economics than we currently have available.
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