Collaborators Join Forces to Create Hydrogen and Ammonia through Hydropower

Australia: In Australia, the East Kimberley Clean Energy Project, which generates Ammonia and green Hydrogen products, is being carried out in collaboration with indigenous people by Pollination.

The project is being developed as part of a partnership in which the Kimberley Land Council, Pollination, and the traditional landowners, MG Corporation and Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation, will participate as equal shareholders in both the project's development and the company established to oversee it.

According to Pollination Head of Projects Rob Grant, this initiative provides an equitable, aspirational, and doable vision for Australia's clean energy future. To build a significant new clean energy export hub that will aid Australia and our region in decarbonizing, grow new industries, and ensure traditional owners and residents are shareholders, not just stakeholders, in the benefits, it makes use of the natural advantages and already-existing energy and port infrastructure in the East Kimberley region.

The project has finished its scoping, and over the following 12 months, development will proceed. Construction might start as early as the end of 2025, with the start of production by the end of 2028, pending the completion of the feasibility and fund-raising stages.

On MG Corporation owned land close to Kununurra, Western Australia, stage one of the project included the construction of a greenfield 900 MW solar farm and a 50,000 tonne per annum Hydrogen manufacturing facility. Fresh water from Lake Argyle will be electrolyzed into green Hydrogen, which will then be transferred to the Port of Wyndham via a new 120-km-long pipeline.

An Ammonia production facility in Wyndham, which produces roughly 250,000 tonnes of green Ammonia annually, will get baseload renewable energy from the Ord River hydro facility at Lake Argyle. This Ammonia will be exported to important commercial partners in Asia and Europe and used locally in agriculture.

The Argyle Diamond Mine and the surrounding cities of Kununurra and Wyndham receive electricity from the Ord River hydro power project, which was finished in 1997. The Ord River hydroelectric facility has made it possible for renewable energy to take over as the area's sole source of electricity. Each year, the project produces over 212 GWh of emission-free electricity, which Horizon Power and the Argyle Diamond Mine purchase.

Grant noted that dozens of nations around the world, many of them in our neighborhood, have already released a Hydrogen policy, signalling the importance of this resource as the world gets closer to net zero. To fulfil its objective to become a clean energy giant in the future global economy, the Australian government has placed green Hydrogen at the center of its plans. This project fits the bill perfectly.

The Aboriginal Clean Energy (ACE) Partnership, a new business in which MG Corporation, Kimberley Land Council, Balanggarra Ventures, and Pollination own equal shares, will oversee organizing, developing, and managing the project.