AARON PATRICK: After powering the hydrogen dream with billions, Chris Bowen says he never ‘bought the hype’

Australian governments have spent billions subsidising a technology they promised could transform industry, so-called green hydrogen, creating a cleaner and cheaper rival to the oil and gas blamed for global warming.

Yesterday, Energy Minister Chris Bowen admitted that he had “never quite bought the hype” of green hydrogen. This rather startling revelation, made on the 7.30 program and qualified by an assurance that he hasn’t written off the tech either, was seized upon with relish by his Coalition counterpart, Dan Tehan, in Question Time today.

Mr Tehan asked Mr Bowen if he remembered who predicted in 2023 that hydrogen would generate $50 billion by 2050 “creating tens of thousands of jobs in regional Australia as Australia transforms to a renewable energy superpower”.

“Or has he wiped this statement from his mind like his promise to lower power bills by $275,” Mr Tehan said.

The person who spoke those words was, of course, the current minister for energy and climate change, a man who uses his prodigious energy to endlessly promote a climate target his opponents have vowed to abolish.

As the minister, Mr Bowen knows that Australia remains a global force in gas, coal and iron ore. When it comes to green hydrogen Australia is a rounding error.

Mr Bowen explained today that in a year when electric cars overtook those with an internal combustion engine, the number of hydrogen-powered vehicles sold was one.

“So there was a lot of hype in previous years about hydrogen,” he conceded.

Bad bet

The hydrogen industry was backed by serious money, in part driven by advocacy by economist Ross Garnaut and businessman Andrew Forrest. The 2025 Budget allocated $17 billion to three hydrogen projects, according to Murchison Green Hydrogen, a Perth-based energy business, a bet that water could be turned into energy by using electricity from the sun and wind to separate the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in H2O.

In his answer, Mr Bowen also read from a historical quote. “Export of green hydrogen . . . will put Australia at the forefront of an emerging renewable energy market leading to new jobs, new business and environmental dividends,” he said. “Well said, Dan.”

The statement was made, he revealed, by Mr Tehan and Angus Taylor when they were ministers in the Morrison Government and included the commitment to make Australia a hydrogen export “powerhouse”.

Those predictions seemed feasible in 2022, when Australia became the first country to export liquified hydrogen. More than 100 projects were proposed worth some $225 billion.

The hype never delivered.

Grey, not green

Most of the commercial hydrogen produced every year is made from natural gas or coal, and is known as grey hydrogen.

Australia’s capacity to create green hydrogen last year was a tiny 1180 tonnes, according to Geoscience Australia, a government agency. The number of projects in planning was cut from 90 to 76 that year, reflecting the realisation the technology can’t produce energy cheaply enough to make steel.

While critics pointed out that hydrogen is expensive to produce and dangerous to store — disasters included the Hindenburg airship and the Challenger space shuttle — green hydrogen was promoted as the high-tech replacement for an old-school industry.

Among the plans was a $593 million green hydrogen plant at the Whyalla steelworks in South Australia. When administrators revealed this week they would close down the blast furnace there, costing hundreds of jobs, no one even pretended the workers could go and produce hydrogen molecules.

That ambition was “deferred” at the start of 2025 when it became clear it wasn’t feasible.

Mr Bowen’s comments in Parliament today, while not shutting down Australia’s hydrogen industry, suggest the green hydrogen superpower ambition has caught up with that reality and been abandoned too.