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Sunday, September 8, 2024

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Sunday, September 8, 2024
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$9 million to begin hydrogen roadmap

Government of South Australia
15

PRESS RELEASE

The South Australian Government is continuing to support the transition to a low- carbon economy through a $9 million commitment centered on implementing the first stage of the State Government’s Hydrogen Roadmap.

The initiative provides $8.2 million over four years for Stage One of the roadmap, which begins with the construction of a hydrogen production facility, refuelling station and a trial involving six hydrogen-fuelled buses.

The 2017-18 State Budget also funds:

  •   $500,000 towards a partnership with the Adelaide City Council to support the
    installation of battery systems in laneway businesses to help manage power
    demand.
  •   $200,000 for 10 parking spaces with electric vehicle charging facilities.
  •   $75,000 for electric vehicle recharging stations.

These measures will also support the ambition to make Adelaide the world’s first carbon-neutral city.

Background

The state’s clean and green reputation – crucial to sectors such as tourism and premium food and wine – has been achieved, in part, because of the State’s leadership in clean-energy generation and recycling.
Last year’s budget implemented reforms designed to boost the waste and resource recovery sector and improve the recycling rates.

These reforms are yielding benefits this year and have helped enable the funding of these climate-change initiatives.

Reducing emissions, improving recycling and better reusing resources are also central to achieving a more circular economy.

An independent report released in May 2017 showed that a circular economy for South Australia could result in an additional 25,700 jobs by 2030.

Quotes attributable to Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis

The South Australian economy – like the economy of the nation as a whole – is transitioning towards a low-carbon future.

By positioning ourselves as a leader in that transition and embracing new technology, we can ensure we are at the forefront of attracting the investment and job opportunities these new technologies bring.

We have seen that in recent months when the world’s leading battery storage companies turned their attention to investing in what we are doing with Our Energy Plan here in South Australia.

By supporting the hydrogen and electric-vehicle industries, we can also be a leading player and create jobs in these growing sectors.

Quotes attributable to Climate Change Minister Ian Hunter

Tackling climate change, improving the environment and economic growth aren’t mutually exclusive terms.

Our state has shown you can cut emissions while attracting investment and growing jobs, and this budget builds on these past successes.

These measures will help us achieve the full potential a low-carbon economy offers.

We’re backing future industries and ensuring our state benefits from the clean energy revolution happening around the world.

Media Contact: David Russell 0434 307 012

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Comments

15 responses to “$9 million to begin hydrogen roadmap”

  1. Charles Avatar
    Charles

    $8.2 million for hydrogen, but only a fraction of that for battery electric. What a waste 🙁

    1. Shane White Avatar
      Shane White

      Hey, chin up. You’ll get a $20k car park.
      Climate solved! WOOOHOOO!!!!

  2. coreidae Avatar
    coreidae

    “construction of a hydrogen production facility, refuelling station and a trial involving six hydrogen-fuelled buses”

    Most interesting. I wonder if the H production facility is going to be powered by renewable electricity – hopefully

    1. Shane White Avatar
      Shane White

      Does this mean we’ll have to remove the CLEAN GREEN POWERED BY GAS stickers from our existing busses? Or can we keep them on? Or will we be able to keep the masses of diesel busses going because we’ll have some hydrogen powered busses too?
      The future is so very exciting.

      1. coreidae Avatar
        coreidae

        ~ 20% of CO2e comes from transport. If we can move that from hydrocarbons to lower emissions technologies, electricity and hydrogen (possibly ammonia too!) then I think that is an improvement.

        1. Shane White Avatar
          Shane White

          We don’t need improvements, we need change (in accordance with science and equity). Where is the government’s scientific basis for this program? How does it fit in with plans to return to a safe climate?
          Oh that’s right, there are NO plans! No demand for them either worryingly.

          But hey, we’ll have some $20k car parks, half a dozen H powered busses maybe, we’ll keep driving, flying, manufacturing and consuming, and end up with 4C+.

          This is another greenwash scheme to blind citizens, keep them convinced “we’re making a difference” and avoiding climate change. It’s total and utter BS designed to keep White Moderate happy.

          The hour is so late that not only do we now need emission reductions beyond historical precedent but we now also need another carbon sink equivalent in magnitude to that of the world’s oceans or land. Dribbling technology only makes the problem worse, blinding citizens, increasing the committed sea level rise and the requirement of mitigation.

          GREENWASH.

          Refs –
          http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000392/abstract
          https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.05878

          If you want to reduce transport emissions THEN STOP DRIVING. Real rocket science.

          Ultimately though there simply seems to be too many stupid and fat people.

          1. coreidae Avatar
            coreidae

            So what do you say to the average person? (a) stop driving and ride a bike or (b) keep driving but here’s a technology that is lower emissions? I’d suggest that only the latter option would engage with people. Look I agree, having mass cycling instead of cars is *much* better – I cycle commute every day.

          2. Shane White Avatar
            Shane White

            The average person needs to hear the declaration of an emergency from their elected leaders. Climate change is now an existential threat to civilisation, and to those of us personally living in high bushfire risk areas.

            THE LAST THING the average person should be told is that there is some new technology because all it will do is make an incremental improvement, bright-side the situation and give them an excuse to continue to do little or nothing. All it does is entrench business as usual, gives them reason NOT to worry and to instead carry on flying, driving consuming and most importantly voting for morons.

            Have a read of this link below about Martin Luther King’s identification of White Moderate. New technology and the resulting incremental improvements gives White Moderate reason to continue and not instead see the danger, and demand social and political change:

            https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/27/transformative-power-climate-truth

  3. coreidae Avatar
    coreidae

    Advertiser article
    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/fasttrack-to-a-lowcarbon-highway-as-state-government-announces-hydrogen-bus-trial/news-story/dfd9e5905c36a39209c29be422a0ae97

  4. Jo Avatar
    Jo

    hydrogen is not renewable energy but a method to restore energy – at a very low efficiency. I recently talked to a hydrogen systems supplier: you need 5 kWh to generate 1 kWh output from hydrogen. Not sure if this is the right direction.

    1. Tom Avatar
      Tom

      I’ll lay my cards on the table – I don’t think that hydrogen will ever take off.

      However, to speak for the devil, maybe SA is looking at installing 3000MW or 5000MW of wind capacity, even though their peak demand is only usually around 2000MW and they can only export about 800MW.

      In this case, when the generators are running at 50%, SA will be self-sufficient, but when they are running at 100%, SA will have surplus power that they can’t do anything with.

      At these times energy would be essentially free, so it would make sense to store it somehow. Maybe generating hydrogen and storing it in really big tanks to later run open cycle gas turbines (except the “gas” is hydrogen instead of methane) in times of low wind might be cheaper than pumped hydro or batteries, despite the inefficiency.

    2. Shane White Avatar
      Shane White

      With that logic Jo, so are donuts. Burn a donut and you get energy too. Yes one needs to consider the “well to wheel” efficiency. But a more intelligent stance is take a step back and consider whether spending money on research and development of car engines is sensible. Climate mitigation now obviously demands emergency scale action and we simply will not hear endorsement of this from these sorts of politicians. Hell, the scale of the challenge hasn’t even be revealed to the public.
      This is simply an SA greenwash. We need social and political changes PRIOR to technological changes. That all starts with HONESTY. There’s the rub; honesty from a politician?
      AAAAAAAH HA HA HA HA HA.

  5. Shane White Avatar
    Shane White

    SA leads in rhetoric: “The South Australian economy – like the economy of the nation as a whole – is transitioning towards a low-carbon future.”, Tom K.

    Per head of population, SA spent the least on cycling infrastructure in 2015-16: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorias-bike-budget-lags-behind-most-other-states-report-finds-20170515-gw56rz.html

    A transition to a low carbon economy? That’s not what I see on the roads; what I see is a transition to a high carbon economy.

    Tourism, premium food and wine all encourage national and international travel, as demonstrated recently by the influx of busses full of Chinese tourists driving all over the place in enormous busses.

    Koutsantonis and Weatherill simply intend to increase or maintain the status quo: Driving.

    Yawn.

  6. Shane White Avatar
    Shane White

    If the governments care so much about climate change then why don’t they state what needs to be done? Is it because they don’t know or don’t care?
    Where’s Weatherill’s and Koutsantonis’ admission of our grossly inadequate federal INDC? Where’s their push to increase it? Where’s the discussion?
    But there’s no money in declaring an emergency.

  7. Allan Barr Avatar
    Allan Barr

    95% of Hydrogen is created utilizing Natural gas aka methane. Just another DIRTY way to store energy. Greed has no bounds and will be the extinction of us all.

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