This week’s federal budget has revealed that Labor has quietly removed $75 million of uncommitted funding from the Hydrogen Highways program.
The much vaunted scheme was spruiked as a pathway into a sustainable future for the Australian trucking industry and meant to encourage the use of hydrogen-fuelled trucks and the building of charging stations along major freight routes when it was set up in 2022.
But according to one report, Hydrogen Highways has committed funding to only one project in three years – Line Hydrogen’s $5.5 million George Town development in Tasmania.
The one other well-advanced project – a joint initiative between the NSW and Victorian governments to build charging infrastructure along the Hume Highway – has been abandoned.
A spokeswoman for Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen declined to say whether the program, which was set up as part of Labor’s Driving the Nation fund, had been shut down.
“We have made historic investments in hydrogen as part of a Future Made in Australia,” the spokeswoman said.
“As a part of that, we’re reallocating funding from the Hydrogen Highways program for other priorities to accelerate decarbonisation in the transport sector.”
Speaking at an estimates hearing, Climate Change and Energy Department official Matthew Ryan said the program had stalled because of the inability to source long-haul hydrogen vehicles, reported The Australian Financial Review.
“The availability of the vehicles was one of the key sticking points,” Ryan said. “Long-haul hydrogen vehicles weren’t as prospective as was to be expected, so it’s probably a little bit longer off than we’d hoped with that program.”
He said hydrogen-powered vehicles were predominantly sourced from Europe, but their heavier weight meant they were not well suited to Australian roads.
“There was certainly the expectation that the vehicles would be available” when the program was established, Ryan said.
“I think [the states and territories] got to the point where it wasn’t quite where it needed to be in the time frame they were looking to … but it’s taken us quite a while for us to get to where we are now.”
Hydrogen truck manufacturer Hyzon tried to get traction for the technology in Australia as recent as last year, holding a media launch for a new $800,000 prime mover last March.
Just a few months later it had laid off its staff from the Noble Park plant and shut up shop with the parent company in the US now dissolved.
An industry insider told us at the time he was confident the Australian technology, and staff, would get picked up by a new buyer, but no new deals eventuated.
Meanwhile, Pure Hydrogen successfully registered Australia’s first hydrogen fuel cell prime mover in Queensland late last year.
More recently, the company announced that its majority-owned subsidiary, HDrive International, had sold two Hydrogen-powered trucks to Toll Transport which are due for delivery later in the year.