Seven companies proceed in Aussie green hydrogen funding round

Seven companies have been shortlisted to compete for AUD 70 million (USD 48.9m/EUR 42.8m) of federal government funding targeting renewable hydrogen projects in Australia.

The so-called Renewable Hydrogen Deployment Funding Round was initiated in April by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). The agency is seeking to finance projects involving the construction of large-scale electrolysers of at least 10 MW that will produce green hydrogen using wind and solar power, either directly or through a contracting approach.

On Monday, ARENA published the list of the seven companies that will be allowed to submit full applications for the next stage of the race by January 2021. Their number will be trimmed to two or more to share the available financing, it said.

The names of shortlisted candidates are available in the table below.

Combined, the shortlisted companies are requesting more than AUD 200 million in grant funding for projects with an overall value of almost AUD 500 million. The selected projects propose to use renewable hydrogen for various end uses, including transport, gas injection, renewable ammonia production, power and industrial use. Four of the schemes are based in Western Australia.

ARENA will announce the winners by the middle of 2021. The successful projects are expected to reach financial close by late 2021 and enter construction in 2022.

The initial phase of the competition gathered 36 expressions of interest for over AUD 3 billion of projects, ARENA said. The agency’s CEO Darren Miller explained that the ultimate goal is to lower the price of renewable hydrogen so as to make it competitive with other forms of energy.

(AUD 1.0 = USD 0.699/EUR 0.611)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!