Speak up against coal to hydrogen! - Environment Victoria

It’s the zombie coal project you’ve never heard of. A group of Japanese companies want to build a ‘gasification plant’ to extract hydrogen from BROWN COAL and then ship it to Japan through the Port of Hastings.

‘Gasifying’ brown coal is literally the most polluting way you can make hydrogen. And if it goes full-scale it could spew out the equivalent of 550,000 petrol cars every year!

The Latrobe Valley has seen lots of wacky plans to repurpose Victorian brown coal come and go. Invariably they have all failed, and this is the final zombie coal project that we need to stop.

The Victorian government weighing up whether to support this project, and we need to speak up!

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I'm writing to ask you to rule out any further government support for the proposed Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) or ‘coal to hydrogen’ project.

If it were to go ahead, the HESC project would pollute Gippsland's air and water and create more than 3 million tonnes of carbon pollution each year - equivalent to adding over 550,000 petrol cars to the road.

Hydrogen projects in states like Queensland and South Australia are using clean renewable energy, and will be much more attractive to customers in Korea and Japan looking to decarbonise.

As the rest of the world shifts to green, renewable solutions, Victoria could be left with an expensive stranded asset and another coal mine to clean up.

HESC's environmental claims rely on the promise of using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology to capture and bury carbon pollution, but CCS projects have a track-record of being unreliable and expensive – beset by delays and failure.

Brown coal is one of the dirtiest possible sources of energy, polluting the climate and our local air and waterways. As a Victorian, I want to see my government supporting long-term, clean energy and industry – building our future and not trapping us in the past.

Will you represent my concerns and oppose further public funding and support for the HESC project?

Have you heard about the harebrained scheme to turn Victorian brown coal into hydrogen and export it to Japan!?

This process of ‘gasifying’ brown coal is literally the most polluting way you can make hydrogen. The pilot project used a whopping 150 tonnes of coal to make just one tonne of hydrogen.

And if it goes full-scale it could spew out more than 3 million tonnes of carbon pollution. That’s the equivalent of adding over 550,000 petrol cars to the road!

The companies involved, J-POWER and Sumitomo corporation, are saying they need more public money to get a full-scale project off the ground, so we need every Victorian MP to know that the community opposes this plan.

Will you ask your local Victorian MP to rule out further support for this dirty coal project?

There’s one final element that’ll make your skin crawl. There’s very little interest from the existing coal mine operators in hosting this project, so it’s possible they’ll have to dig a NEW brown coal mine in the Latrobe Valley, which the government hasn’t ruled out.

J-POWER and Sumitomo corporation are also making outrageous claims their project is ‘clean’ based on a promise they’ll capture and bury the carbon pollution (CCS). But we’ve seen this time and again.

Their promise to use CCS is at best far-fetched and at worst, a cynical ploy to greenwash a dirty new fossil fuel project. You can read more about why their claims don’t stack up in our post here >>