Tasmania's fledgling hydrogen industry requires a lot of water and a lot of power to function, but the impact it will have on Tasmania's water has not yet been fully realised.
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The hydrogen industry has been named among a growing list of industrial scale projects that will place pressure on Tasmania's freshwater resources, which has got academics and scientists worried for the future of water management in the state.
However, those in the know in the hydrogen industry say that despite the fact it needs a lot of water to function, that water will be taken from existing catchments and will not compound the river degradation already found along the system.
Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone is championing the hydrogen industry for Tasmania and hydrogen cluster manager Neil Grose said the water use will be taken from the state's existing dams.
"The whole hydrogen industry at Bell Bay is centred on five key things that may make Bell Bay attractive in a global sense: renewable energy, the availability of water, the availability of a skilled workforce to support the industry and a deep water port."
The impact of large scale industrialisation on Tasmania's rivers and waterways has been documented in a report that was not released publicly by Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania. It has also been documented in a private study completed by the Tasmanian Independent Science Council.
The findings found industrialisation such as hydropower generation, irrigation and agricultural run-off alongside forestry and mining had impacted on nearly half of Tasmania's river systems.
Those findings have experts worried about the impact emerging industries such as hydrogen will have on an already stressed system.
However, Mr Grose said the transportation of hydrogen through pipes would not disrupt the environment and it was not likely to impact on river systems because it was already stored in dams. If sent through pipes it will not impact evaporation levels, for example.
"You need anywhere between 9 and 16 litres of water to make one kilogram of hydrogen, but it depends on the technology," he said.
"If you want to make ammonia, you need some more water."
Tasmania's hydrogen projects on the horizon are looking at ammonia as a way of easily transporting hydrogen, which will require more water resources, but it does make it a lot easier to transport for export.
However, Mr Grose said exactly where that water was going to come from hadn't been decided on yet.
Despite the fact that Bell Bay has been touted as the best location for the hub, and water availability has been on the list of reasons why it's a good spot.
"So If it was to come from one place, it would come off the plateau, through Trevallyn Dam, and down through the irrigation schemes down to Bell Bay," he said.
Once the water source is decided, it will require a network of pipes to get it down to Bell Bay and into the facility to produce hydrogen.
Desalination is an option, however it is costly, but there's another alternative that is being looked at by the Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone - wastewater.
The National Hydrogen Strategy identifies Tasmania as an ideal location for a national hydrogen industry due to its 'many advantages' such as the state's hydro power and "abundance of fresh water".
However, it noted that Australia would need to address competing demands for water, which may well happen in Tasmania as the hydrogen industry grows.
"To produce enough hydrogen to satisfy Japan's projected annual imports in 2030 would require less than one per cent of the water now used by Australia's mining industry each year," the national hydrogen strategy reads.
"To be a major supplier of a large-scale global hydrogen industry in 2050, however, would require more water. Under strong hydrogen growth settings, water consumption in 2050 in Australia may be the equivalent of about one-third of the water used now by the Australian mining industry. Australia will therefore need to consider how to balance hydrogen's demands with other water priorities.
"In many areas there will be limited capacity given existing demand from agriculture, industry, mining and households. Other uses for water may have higher economic, social or cultural value."
Tasmania has been placed at the forefront of these discussions, and potential competitiveness for water with huge demand for the resource already used by the mining, forestry and agriculture sectors; the exponential expansion of irrigation and hydrogen, which could lead to over-allocation and place stress on the environment.
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