The big problem with hydrogen is having to make the stuff in the first place. But South Australia has the gas as a natural resource.
From where I’m sitting to write this column, I can see in the far distance a wind farm at a place called Starfish Hill. The 22 wind turbines produce 33 MW of electricity which power the equivalent of around 30,000 houses a year. This was the first wind farm built in South Australia and dates back to 2003. The trouble is, on a still day, it generates nothing and that is the weakness of wind and solar power – they need to be backed up somehow with base load power from a more reliable source.
But secondly, the United States, Europe and Japan have all come to realise that it’s in their security interests to reduce their dependence on energy from unstable or even adversary states. Germany’s decisions to phase out their nuclear power programs and instead become dependent on gas from RussiaThe current German government realises that the country needs to be relyon either its own energy or from allied or sympathetic countries.
Every fuel source has its weakness. Wind and solar aren’t much use on a still day or at night. They need to be supplemented by base load power. Gas in varying degrees generates greenhouse gas emissions but is on the whole relatively cheap. Nuclear power excites concern about accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Hydropower means dams and if you’re old enough you will remember the Tasmanian dams controversy of the early 1980s.
If natural hydrogen can be extracted from those reserves on Kangaroo Island and the York Peninsula, its price would be exceptionally low – around 50 cents a kilogram. That’s well below the cost of green hydrogen. At that price, South Australia could harness the hydrogen to very good effect.
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