so-called Energy project planned on the Nullarbor.

see also www.kalminer.com.au/news/kalgoorlie-miner/750000-allocate...

$750,000 allocated for early planning study of $107 billion proposed green hydrogen project at Eucla.

The State Government and the company behind one of the world’s largest energy projects proposed for the remote WA coastline at Eucla will spend $750,000 on an early planning study — with the minister-in-charge saying the green hydrogen product might be needed sooner than anticipated.

WA Hydrogen Industry Minister Alannah MacTiernan told the Kalgoorlie Miner the State Government and InterContinental Energy would each spend $375,000 for an independent consultant to engage in early planning for the Western Green Energy Hub Project.

The project, which InterContinental says would cover a 15,000sqkm area, seeks to generate up to 50 gigawatts of solar and wind power to produce 3.6 million tonnes per annum of green hydrogen for export to Europe and Asia.

Ms MacTiernan said there was also potential for the hydrogen to be used in Australia.

InterContinental on its website estimates the total build out capital cost of the project to be US$70 billion (A$107 billion) — “one of the world’s largest energy projects”.

It is proposed for one of the most remote parts of the WA coastline west of Eucla, population 37.

Ms MacTiernan said the remoteness of the project would make it “very challenging” to achieve but she compared the task to the development in the 1960s of the now-successful iron ore industry in the Pilbara and Kimberley.

She noted Port Hedland was a small town in the 1960s, and Karratha “did not exist” but the North West had been successfully economically developed.

She said the area west of Eucla was suitable because it was a vast tract of land — “(the project) needs a massive scale” — with no current economic use, while the abundant availability of solar and wind energy “is what you want ... to maximise a return”.

InterContinental also had a formal relationship in place with the local Mirning native title group — the Mirning have a permanent board seat — and was interested in developing an economic return from their land, she said.

Multinational company CWP Global is also a partner in the project’s consortium, with Ms MacTiernan expecting more companies to join the project because they were not simply interested in off-take agreements but “wanted to be involved in all aspects”.

Ms MacTiernan said the project’s timeframes were accelerating — when the project was first proposed in 2018, the date the product was needed was said to be 2040, “but two years later it was 2030”.

“Now our trading partners are making it very clear they want to start importing by 2025,” she said.

She said a final investment decision was still two to three years away, and there was an enormous amount of work to be done to get to that point.

“We need to start planning ... looking at the social impacts and add-on economic benefits,” she said.

Ms MacTiernan said it was a project which was no longer in “never-never” land and needed to be progressed with urgency before other parts of the world — the Middle East, Africa, US and South America — moved to fill the rising demand in green hydrogen energy.

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Taken on: October 29, 2022

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