W.A. green hydrogen project expands to 12GW, and 4.5 GWh battery storage

Junior mining company Province Resources says it is moving ahead with its 12 gigawatt (GW) HyEnergy hydrogen and ammonia renewable energy export hub in Carnarvon, almost a year after then-partner, the French giant Total Eren pulled out of the project.

The former gold and nickel explorer is a newbie to the renewables space, yet the scope of the original project has continued to expand even after the exit of the French giant.

The original project was scaled at 1 GW, which then blew up into an 8 GW green hydrogen and ammonia project when Total Eren signed a Memorandum of Understanding to be a 50 per cent shareholder.

The proposal currently in front of the Western Australian EPA is for 12 GW of wind and solar and a hydrogen and ammonia production and export hub to effectively ring the town of Carnarvon. 

Exports will be from a brand new port while water for hydrogen production will be drawn from a new desalination plant. A 4.5 GWh battery will support the project. 

New transmission lines and substations will feed power in from 6.8 GW of wind – with Vestas’ largest turbine at 7.2 MW tipped as the ideal option – and 5.2 GW of solar across two sites to the east and south of Carnarvon.

The hydrogen facility will still deliver the originally proposed 60,000 tonnes a year

The ammonia plant would be able to produce up to 3.35 Mtpa and is also geared towards exports via a pipeline to the future port. 

Shipping lanes up to 20km out from the Carnarvon coast are part of the plan and up to 140m wide, requiring some 3-6.9 million cubic metres of seafloor to be dredged. 

All up, construction for the ambitious project is expected to take a decade. 

Province Resources expects the project to require up to 4000 people during the construction phase, and an ongoing workforce of 500. 

Aside from the sheer scale of the electricity side of the project, the EPA noted several environmental issues that might cause some challenges. 

Matters of national environmental significance identified in the area outlined for the HyEnergy project include the neighbouring Shark Bay world and national heritage areas, two threatened plants, a saltmarsh, 15 threatened local animals, 32 threatened marine species and 55 migratory animals. 

Province Resources, which was suspended from the ASX in April last year with promises to relist as a hydrogen company, is worth just over $48 million. 

Province Resources said in its December quarterly activities report that it expects enough permissions to come in during 2024 to allow the small scale Phase 1 of the project to begin construction in 2025. 

The company will need to find deep-pocketed partners to help, despite having $11.825 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the last quarter.

Its shares last traded at 4.1c.

Correction: Province Resources’ cash holdings have been corrected..