Australian Gas Infrastructure Group's green hydrogen gas blend reaches Gladstone customers

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

A central Queensland city has become the first in Australia to have its entire gas network blended with green hydrogen amid greenwashing accusations against the company behind the project.
The Australian Gas Infrastructure Group (AGIG) unveiled its Hydrogen Park Gladstone facility on Wednesday, a site which blends up to 10 per cent hydrogen with natural gas.
It means the company's entire Gladstone network of about 700 customers are being supplied with the lower-emissions product.
"This is a demonstration facility, so the purpose of this is to show [the technology] and for us to learn that it is technically possible to blend into a whole-of-city network," said acting chief executive Cathryn McArthur.
The project began operating about six months ago and AGIG said it had produced more than 1 tonne of green hydrogen so far.
Green hydrogen is produced onsite using an electrolyser which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.
That hydrogen is then mixed with gas and distributed into its entire network in Gladstone, which supplies gas to commercial and residential customers.
Ms McArthur said customers had been using the product at no additional cost.
The Queensland government supported the project with $2.73 million of funding, while AGIG said it had also invested $6.48 million.
AGIG has been supplying the blended gas from its South Australian facility, but the company said Gladstone was the first city where its entire network was using the product.
The launch of the Gladstone site comes less than a week after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) launched action in the Federal Court relating to the Australian Gas Network's advertising, which claimed its gas would be renewable within a generation.
AGIG is the Australian Gas Network's parent company.
The ACCC action argued technical and economic obstacles meant the company could not make that claim and alleged it was greenwashing.
Ms McArthur said the company would defend the accusations.
"This [Gladstone] project is a real-world demonstration of the potential of renewable gas. It's here, it's real, it's viable and it works," she said.
University of Adelaide acting director for the Centre of Energy Technology, Greg Metha, said projects needed to have a much higher concentration than the 10 per cent used to reduce carbon emissions.
"The amount of carbon dioxide that you save is much less than 10 per cent," Dr Metha said.
Ms McArthur said they planned to incrementally scale up AGIG's hydrogen projects.
"It is a 10 per cent blend but you've got to start somewhere, and hopefully one day we will see that at 100 per cent," she said.
The company has a target for 100 per cent renewable and carbon-neutral gas in its distribution networks by 2050.
The AGIG launch in Gladstone came in the same week developers pulled out of a $14 billion green hydrogen export project in the city.
Earlier in the year Fortescue also abandoned its electrolyser manufacturing site in Gladstone.
When high concentrations of green hydrogen are used in existing gas networks it can cause steel pipes to become brittle.
Ms McArthur said the company had planned and costed for minor modifications to its existing network which would allow them to distribute 100 per cent green hydrogen.
Dr Metha said he believed it would be challenging.
Dr Metha said green hydrogen should be used in industries which were tricky to decarbonise, such as in ammonia production.
He said from an efficiency perspective it made more sense to just switch to electric appliances.
Ms McArthur said AGIG planned to open another site in Victoria's Wodonga next year which would be one of the largest in the country once operational.