The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has shortlisted 7 companies to move to the next round of its AUD 70 million renewable hydrogen funding round under which it plans to select commercial-scale deployments of renewable hydrogen in the country.
The 7 shortlisted applicants are identified as the following:
ARENA said all their projects put together seek more than AUD 200 million ($143 million) in grants with a total project value of AUD 500 million ($357 million). With only AUD 70 million to be shelled out, not many projects can be expected to win this round.
The agency further shared that all applicants have well developed projects involving deployment of 10 MW or larger electrolyser capacity for use in transport, gas injection, renewable ammonia production, power and industrial use. Of these 7, there are 4 projects based in Western Australia, and 1 each in Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria.
These companies were selected out of 36 expressions of interest (EOI) received by ARENA representing a cumulative investment of AUD 3 billion in response to the call issued in April 2019. They will now be required to submit a full application by January 2021 for their projects to be considered by ARENA. Winners should be announced by mid-2021. As per the ARENA timeline, it would expect the winning projects to achieve financial closure by late 2021 and start construction in 2022.
In May 2020, ARENA approved AUD 1.71 million funding for renewable hydrogen project of BP Australia to produce ammonia for industrial use.