Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen appeared at the Tramsheds in Inveresk alongside party colleagues Tasmanian Labor Senator Helen Polley, and Bass Labor candidate Ross Hart.

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The trio collaborated to announce that if Labor were voted into power at the upcoming election, they would allocate $5 million in federal funding to kickstart the planned facility, reiterating the promise already mentioned by federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese.

Labor's commitment is set to support around $80 million in private investment in the first stage of the project, which when fully operational is expected to be valued at $280 million.

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Mr Bowen said electric vehicles would eventually become the norm, however, he believed green hydrogen had the potential to fuel Australia's heavy vehicle industry moving forward.

"Converting the heavy vehicle fleet in Australia over time, whether they be trucks or busses, is an important part of lowering emissions and also is very important in regards to creating jobs for the future," he said.

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Founder and chairman of LINE Hydrogen, Brendan James, said the first stage of LINE's project was set to use co-located large-scale solar panels to assist in hydrogen production, before being leased to industrial partners.

"Right now in Australia, we use about 80 million liters of diesel per day, and from that, we produce around 216,000 tonnes of Co2 each and every day," he said.

"The George Town project, when we get up and running, will be producing about 1.5 tonnes of hydrogen per day, which is enough to run one fuel-celled car around the world four times each day, so it's a significant amount of hydrogen we'll all be bringing to Tasmania."

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Mr James said, over time, LINE could also build at least five hydrogen refueling stations across Tasmania, and at full scale, the project could create 135 direct jobs and 80 downstream jobs.

He said replacing diesel with cost-competitive green hydrogen would provide a number of benefits for Australia, including improving energy security, and terms of trade, as well as ensuring net-zero targets were met in the short term.

Bass Liberal MHR Bridget Archer highlighted the federal government's $70 million commitment to establishing a hydrogen hub at Bell Bay, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison travelled to Tasmania to help announce.

"This was the result of long-term collaboration with local industry," she said.

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