Energy company, pastoral enterprise announce plans for renewable ammonia and green hydrogen plant

As cotton growers continue their work to reduce emissions, there could be a new option on the table for those in northern New South Wales. 

A partnership between green hydrogen company Hiringa Energy and the Sundown Pastoral Co has been awarded almost $36 million in funding from the NSW government.

The project involves the construction and operation of a renewable ammonia and green hydrogen production facility on a cotton farm near Moree.

The aim to help farmers by producing low-emissions fertiliser and fuel.

According to Hiringa, green hydrogen would be produced by using renewable electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen — an emission-free process called electrolysis.

Ammonia is a low-carbon by-product farmers could then use to fertilise their crops.

The facility will feature a 27-megawatt solar farm designed to produce roughly 45,000 MWh of energy a year.

Hiringa Energy said the hydrogen produced could displace more than 1.4 million litres of imported diesel and lead to the direct abatement of the equivalent of more than 17,000 tonnes of CO2.

Hiringa’s executive director for Australia David Heard said as far as he was aware, this project was a first of its kind.

“Nobody has ever stitched together a project like this before,” he said.

“It includes the renewable energy from solar, the manufacturing of hydrogen, the manufacturing of ammonia from the hydrogen and the use of that ammonia all on the same location.”

Under the NSW government’s grant application process, the facility is required to be in production by 2025. 

“It is a challenging time frame but obviously so is the imperative to decarbonise agriculture so we are trying to get moving on that,” Mr Heard said.

Climate-positive cotton

Sundown Pastoral Co would be home to the commercial-scale pilot project, which was expected to cost more than $100 million.

Owner David Statham said the facility would be a significant step in his continuing journey to produce climate-positive cotton.

“Fuel and fertiliser are somewhere between 75 and 85 per cent of our emissions,” he said.

“The vast majority of the farm’s emissions are in the two products I’m trying to displace.

“If we can produce a fibre and deliver it to customers around the world that has got almost zero emissions … that’s a pretty positive story to tell and it enables the cotton industry to differentiate itself.”

Australia behind on hydrogen

Francois Aguey-Zinsou is a professor of chemistry and an expert in green hydrogen from the University of Sydney.

He welcomed the pilot project but said a lot more needed to be done to to ramp up renewable energy generation in Australia.

Professor Aguey-Zinsou said the $36 million allocated was a drop in the ocean, when other projects in the US, Europe and Africa were well advanced and attracted government subsidies.

“We don’t have a master plan,” he said.

“We are behind what other countries have been doing in this space [and] we don’t have the skills across industry and we have to learn by doing.”

Professor Aguey-Zinsou said the federal government needed to plan better for a lower carbon future and foster more schemes.

“All those pilot programs are good in this regard, to help us to start to learn how to use hydrogen across the economy,” he said.