World's Largest Home For Green Hydrogen Announced In Western Australia

Aug, 2021 - By SMI

The Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) aims at deploying 50 GW wind and solar generation.

Western Australia can soon be the hub for the world's largest project of green hydrogen. The Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) aims at deploying 50 GW wind and solar generation for producing over 3.5 Mn tons worth green hydrogen or around 20 Mn ton ammonia annually. The monster project outperforms the Kazakhstan’s 45-GW Svevind project  which was declared just a few weeks ago. This underscores those huge paydays that energy sector is predicting in exports of green energy.

The hydrogen is borderline wasteful and inefficient as compared with storing as well as releasing green energy within batteries. However, the world aims to completely decarbonize by 2050, where batteries just don't consist that energy density in many applications, including long-haul trucking, aviation, and shipping. Hydrogen would also be the key for decarbonizing production of steel – where it represents an opportunity of energy export in the world post-oil and coal that doesn't seem like it is getting the energy grid globally any time sooner for sharing renewable power minus requiring to put it upon boats. This new hub will take benefit of dense wind potential and outstanding solar potential  of Western Australia, occupying about 15,000 sq. km. (5,800 sq mi) of mostly red, stony desert close to Kalgoorlie in south-east of this state. The construction would began in phases, for ramping up demand as expected for growth of these green fuels.

Remarkably, InterContinental too, is after the Asian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), the similar project of green fuel within north-west of the Western Australia which was the future largest at 26 MW. AREH was accelerated with the status of Major Project by the Government of Australia, but recently, the minister of conservative federal environment of the country placed kibosh on development, stating it would possess "unacceptable" impacts environmentally. It'll be exciting to see the way the larger project of WGEH fares incidentally.