No customers: Plans for Townsville hydrogen project scrapped after failing to find buyers for the product

Australian renewable energy company and hydrogen hopeful Edify Energy has quietly shut down plans for a major hydrogen plant in Townsville, saying it couldn’t find any customers for the product. 

The Edify Green Hydrogen Project (EGH2) was proposed for the Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct (LEIP) in Townsville, where Quinbrook is building a massive battery and polysilicon plant. 

The 17.6 megawatt (MW) hydrogen electrolyser and 21 MW of solar and battery storage was to have been the first stage of an up to 1 gigawatt facility.

But, as Sophie Vorrath reported in April, Edify pulled the project from the federal environmental queue in late March and has now confirmed to Renew Economy that it has put the project “on hold”.

Instead, it’s focusing on building the 150 MW Ganymirra and 150 MW Majors Creek solar projects, and the co-located 150 MW, four hour Majors Creek battery. Work there is set to start in two months time, a spokesperson says. 

The hydrogen project was the recipient of a $1.2 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study. 

In January 2024, EGH2 was awarded nearly $50 million in federal grant funding from the Regional Hydrogen Hubs program. At the time, Edify said construction of the project was expected to begin in 2025.

Edify was not able to comment on whether it will repay any of the grants before deadline.

Paying back government grants for dumped hydrogen projects has become a cause celebre for some governments, such as Queensland which is negotiating with iron ore giant Fortescue over the closure of its PEM50 Hydrogen plant in Gladstone.

The state wants $66 million back that it gave in subsidies for the project, which Fortescue opened in 2024 and closed in mid-2025 – a move blamed, like Edify, on the lack of customers.

Fortescue has agreed to pay back $20 million of the $33 million it got from the federal government. 

Edify’s grant from ARENA was part of an overall $20.7 million allocation that was conditional on the project’s delivery.

Big developers and energy companies have pulled back from participating directly in green hydrogen as the market has failed to live up to hyped expectations that peaked in 2021-22. 

In Australia, the focus appears to have down-shifted to smaller demonstration projects or been retained as massive visionary concepts, with companies like Edify and Fortescue focusing on solar, storage and electrification.

At the pilot scale, the Kwinana Energy Transformation Hub (KETH) in Western Australia which has progressed to the next stage of a government- and industry-backed production and testing facility.

On the big visionary end are the 70 gigawatt (GW) wind, solar and hydrogen Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) in the Nullabor, and the 26 GW Australian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH) in the Pilbara, both of which are still alive.

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