The Hydrogen Fuel Discussion: What's the Buzz?

Hydrogen Fuel Station Sign [Source: Bexim CC BY-SA 4.0] 

On 7th December 2021, I was invited to join John Poljak of keynumbers to discuss some of the issues around hydrogen fuel and its potential impacts on transport and logistics. There is quite a buzz about hydrogen as a clean and abundant fuel to help to reduce carbon emissions. 

But for the general transport enthusiast, there is not much information available. John and I were invited to the Annual General Meeting of the Victorian Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA) to address some of the 'known knowns' and 'known unknowns' of hydrogen and its policy implications.

John has developed a wonderful discussion tool he calls "Key Numbers" to allow groups to brainstorm and spitball various "what if" scenarios by drawing on relevant data, or the key numbers' of various scenarios. 

John has some twenty years of experience in the offshore energy industry and really knows what he is talking about, especially when it comes to the statistics and presenting these in a digestible way for lay audiences. He is the brains behind the operation of keynumbers and did all of the legwork for our presentation.

We used keynumbers in our presentation to the ACT Chapter of CILTA via MS Teams at the Department of Infrastructure in Canberra on 11th October 2021 entitled Road Pricing and Electric Vehicles: Where to from here? John demonstrated how various fuel efficiencies compared with the Victorian and NSW governments' decisions to adopt a 2.5 cents per kilometre charge for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles compared with the fuel excise which is currently set at 43.3 cents per litre as at August 2021.

A video recording of the presentation is below:


 

The slides we used for the presentation are below. If the recording of the session is available, I will add it to this post at a later date.


Background Reading
Australian Renewable Energy Agency: https://arena.gov.au/renewable-energy/hydrogen/.
Bordoff, J. & O’Sullivan, M.L. (2021). Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy, Foreign Affairs, January/February.
Department of Industry, Science Energy and Resources. Australia's Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan: https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias-long-term-emissions-reduction-plan.
Department of Industry, Science Energy and Resources. Growing Australia's hydrogen industry: https://www.industry.gov.au/policies-and-initiatives/growing-australias-hydrogen-industry
Hydrogen Fuels Australia: https://www.hydrogenfuelsaustralia.com.au/.
Greber, J. (2021). Reality check for Morrison and Taylor’s golden ticket to net zero. Australian Financial Review, 18 November.
International Energy Agency (2019). The Future of Hydrogen: Seizing today’s opportunities. Report for the government of Japan, June.
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (2021). Hydrogen Fuel Basics. US Department of Energy.
University of Sydney (2021). What you need to know about hydrogen energy. 22 January.