Salt caverns and minerals across Australia unlock hydrogen industry
Australia can become a global hydrogen superpower, according to new data from the Australian Government’s Exploring for the Future program.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King said scientists had uncovered the potential for large-scale, underground hydrogen storage in salt caverns across the country.
“We know that the technology exists to store hydrogen underground, and thanks to this work, we now also know that Australia has the right geology to support the development of an economically viable hydrogen industry on our own soil,” Minister King said.
Geoscience Australia has uncovered the potential for developing multiple caverns underground in salt deposits across the Canning Basin in Western Australia, the Adavale Basin in Queensland and the offshore Polda Basin in South Australia.
A single large salt cavern could provide the same amount of energy storage as Snowy Hydro 2.0, with multiple caverns this size possible in the same area.
Hydrogen is a clean fuel, and large-scale, cost-effective storage of hydrogen will be essential in achieving our long-term goals for the future.
This new information captured by the Exploring for the Future program and other major discoveries demonstrates Australia’s monumental potential as a hydrogen superpower.
Using Geoscience Australia data, Chalice Mining, through their Julimar project, has uncovered a massive supply of palladium, platinum, nickel, copper, cobalt, and gold just 70 kilometres northeast of Perth in the Gonneville deposit. Some of the minerals found in this deposit are essential to generating hydrogen, so it is fantastic that the world’s biggest discovery of such minerals in the last 20 years was in our own backyard in Western Australia.
An independent assessment of the impact of the Julimar project will be released at the showcase, highlighting the immense value of the work Geoscience does in supporting discoveries like Gonneville.
