25 August 2023
The Australian Hydrogen Council and Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity have shared research on the potential for hydrogen to supply industrial process heat in Australia in the near and long term.
The report, Bringing the heat - Hydrogen's role in decarbonising Australian industrial process heat, was undertaken to understand the current state of play for how users of industrial process heating are thinking about their decarbonisation options, with a particular focus on hydrogen.
We undertook a review of the literature, and undertook more than 40 interviews with experts from:
Academic and industry research bodies
Suppliers of equipment, such as burners, boilers, kilns, furnaces, and ovens and associated instrumentation
Manufacturers of alumina, aluminium, cement, bricks, glass, pulp and paper, food, beverages, and metals.
This wide cohort of energy users represented more than 400 PJ of process heating demand in Australia.
Study participants tended to see hydrogen as further down the priority list for their business. Even for the sectors more likely to need hydrogen as replacement fuel, the high cost and long life of industrial processes – such as alumina refineries, cement kilns, brick kilns and large boiler rooms – require a cautious approach given that investments within this decade can determine carbon footprint of those applications for decades to come.