@Bradbury Thanks for the tip on the crowdfunding platform. Will have a look at it. Terrible time for the green hydro sector - hopefully a turnaround will happen eventually even if some say it will take a decade.

There is an Adelaide-based company that is still listed on the ASX in the Green Hydrogen space @edgescape and @Bradbury - Sparc Technologies (SPN) and they have a JV with FMG that they said on Thursday (see here: Sparc-Hydrogen-Clarification-on-FMG-announcement.PDF) would not be affected by FMG's announcements and intentions to reduce their spend in relation to hydrogen.

Their Sparc Hydrogen joint venture (Sparc Technologies 52%, The University of Adelaide 28% and Fortescue 20%) "is developing next generation green hydrogen technology using a process known as photocatalytic water splitting which requires only sunlight, water and a photocatalyst to produce green hydrogen, without electricity."

Good-o! A boss at my previous job held them and asked me for an opinion on them a couple of years ago and I said they were like a casino bet; you could win big but the odds are you will lose your money, as the eventual winners in this space are very hard to pick at this stage, and the losers will be plentiful. I suggested he just stick with FMG (who he also held) and played it that way.

The Sparc Tech (SPN) chart hasn't exactly been stellar over the past few years, since I had that converstation with him...

At the end of the day, the market will reward those companies who make solid progress towards commercialisation, and will punish those who just burn through cash with very little to show for it, or at least that's how I would expect it to work... It doesn't always. A lot of FMG's following is down to Twiggy himself and what he has achieved - an ASX20 company - the 10th largest ASX-listed company in the country at this point - and he's built it up from nothing to what it is today, but some of the shine is coming off now I reckon, particularly with the revolving door of senior management at Fortescue suggesting that you do what Twiggy says or you do not belong there and you can either quit or be moved on. It's possible that despite what is happening at the coalface (so to speak), the culture at the top is now perhaps quite toxic. I've made money from FMG but I've also reduced my position size over the past year and I'm not putting fresh money into them. The returns have been there, but past performance may not always be a reliable indicator of future performance.

And I won't be investing in SPN - too small - and no good reason that I can see to make me think they are going to be winners over other players in the space.

https://sparctechnologies.com.au/

By the way, Hydrogen is not all SPN do - they have graphene coating tech as well. But not every bright idea makes good money for shareholders.

There is another one - H2G - GreenHy2 Ltd, which used to be called Tempo Australia. But I wouldn't go near them because their MD is Dr Paul Dalgleish who ran RCR into Administration and shareholders who hung on to the end (the final trading halt) with RCR got a 100% loss on their investment for their trouble. I sold out of RCR IRL as soon as the rescue raise settled, so before they went into Administration, so limited my losses, but I wouldn't go near anything that Dalgleish has anything to do with, let alone a company that he runs as the MD. He also (alongside their largest shareholder) pushed out the founder of Tempo, Charlie Bontempo, which was a nasty move at the time.

https://www.greenhy2.com.au/

They are focused on Hydrogen storage rather than hydrogen production, but it's another company operating in that hydrogen space, but not profitably clearly:

Earnings: ROE:

And their graph reflects that:

Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

04-Feb-2025: Another blow to Twiggy's Green Hydrogen ambitions: https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/common-sense-decision-qld-premier-scraps-12-5b-green-hydrogen-project/ar-AA1yjfch

‘Common sense decision’: Qld Premier scraps $12.5b green hydrogen project

[SkyNews Australia]

Nationals MP Colin Boyce has commended the Crisafulli government for canning the Central Queensland Hydrogen project.

Australia’s largest green hydrogen project has collapsed, with the Queensland government pulling funding from construction of the $12.5 billion plant and pipeline in Gladstone.

“This is a common sense decision – a very good economic decision from the Queensland government,” Mr Boyce told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

--- end of excerpt ---

Also:

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2025/02/04/queensland-ends-support-for-3-gw-green-hydrogen-project/ [04-Feb-2025]

Queensland ends support for 3 GW green hydrogen project

Plans to develop a 2.88 GW green hydrogen production facility near Gladstone on the central Queensland coast are in serious doubt after the state government announced it will not commit funding to the $12.4 billion project.

February 4, 2025 David Carroll

Image: Stanwell

Queensland government-owned energy company Stanwell is rethinking its green hydrogen strategy after confirming the state government ruled it will not invest further in the proposed $12.4 billion (USD 7.55 billion) Central Queensland Hydrogen (CQ-H2) project.

Stanwell is part of a consortium of Australian, SIngaporean and Japanese energy companies developing the CQ-H2 project that was to initially involve the installation of up to 720 MW of electrolysers to produce up to 73,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year for domestic use and export. It was proposed the project would ultimately scale up to 2.88 GW of electrolysis capacity to produce more than 1 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen per annum.

The proposal is however now in jeopardy after Queensland Energy Minister David Janetzki announced the state government will end support for the project.

“The Queensland government will not be committing the substantial equity and grant funding requested for Stanwell Corporation Limited to progress the CQ-H2 project,” he said.

“It would have required significantly more than $1 billion in state government funding, including infrastructure for water, port, transmission and hydrogen production.”

Janetzki said the renewable hydrogen investment “does not align” with the government’s expectations for generators to “provide affordable, reliable and sustainable power” for Queenslanders.

Stanwell said that it and its consortium partners are now “considering the state’s announcement and that it is also “reviewing its involvement in other hydrogen initiatives and will work with relevant stakeholders regarding future steps for these projects.”

Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen said he is “surprised and disappointed” by the Queensland government’s move but added the federal government remains supportive of the project which was one of six shortlisted for its $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program

“The Albanese government is firmly committed to seeing Gladstone’s economy grow and creating new jobs for the region,” Bowen said.

“Green hydrogen plays to Australia’s unique strengths and we’re unapologetic about pursuing an industry that is recognised as having an important role in the future of manufacturing and energy in Australia, and globally.”

“Government support in developing hydrogen opportunities around the country provides additional certainty for projects, however how they progress ultimately remains a commercial decision for the parties involved.”

The CQ-H2 project, which has signed an agreement to source renewable energy from the 380 MW Aldoga Solar Farm being built by Spanish renewable energy company Acciona Energia, is currently completing the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) stage with Stanwell having previously signaled a final investment decision for the initial phase would be made by in mid-2025.

The Queensland government’s decision to end its support for the CQ-H2 project comes after it scrapped the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro energy storage project planned for the state’s central coast.

--- end of excerpt ---

Interesting. It's not just Trump wanting to slow down the push into renewable energy solutions and "Drill, baby, Drill!"

Hey @Bear77, this story is quite interesting. One one news site I see that this project has been canned... then on another I see that it is still continuing. The Mayor of Gladstone (where the facility was to be built) announced via a Gladstone City Council media release yesterday (03/02/25) that the Project was still going ahead. Stanwell are reportedly keeping more than $1.4 billion. I suppose we flip a coin hey?

Whether it goes ahead or not likely depends entirely on whether it gets fully funded @pubenvelope and the Qld Gov have said they won't pay another cent, I'm guessing they can't claw back what they - or the previous Qld gov - have already paid - and if there are alternative sources of funding for the remainder of the project then I guess it will go ahead. I do note that the Queensland Energy Minister David Janetzki said that the state government will end support for the project and, importantly, “It would have required significantly more than $1 billion in state government funding, including infrastructure for water, port, transmission and hydrogen production.”

The concern clearly isn't just the project cost, but the additional infrastructure costs, as outlined there, and if the state government isn't going to fund the infrastructure costs, the project likely won't proceed, because it's unlikley that other sources of funding such as the federal government are going to cover power transmission lines, water infrastructure, port infrastructure, etc. when much of that is the state's responsibility and they've said they won't fund it.

The Mayor of Gladstone obviously wants the project to proceed and will likely chase up all available funding options to see if the project can proceed, and until those options are exhausted the project is still going ahead in the Mayor's view, but reading through it all, it seems unlikely it can proceed without state government support.

I’m just wondering how much of it is posturing to try and save face after shelling out so much funding?

If the big players in the mining/energy space can’t get the numbers to stack up here, l wonder what angel investors out there will step in to finish this off?

im worried the same thing is going to happen in South Australia especially seeing we only have a budget of $500m to deliver. not sure how far we can stretch that budget, however it seems unrealistic to go ahead if we need to build the same infrastructure to stand up hydrogen production.

currently the government in sa is doubling down on the project (as it was an election commitment) however I’m not sure what their threshold is for walking away from the project. time will tell I guess

The opposite is true in Queensland @SudMav - they have had a change of government at their election on 26 October 2024 when the LNP defeated the incumbent Labor government and the LNP ran on a platform of (among other things) reviewing Labor's comitments to large projects and better economic management (less wasted money) - look at pages 16 and 17 of this: https://www.lnp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/LNP-The-Right-Priorities-for-Queenslands-Future-Dec-2023.pdf That's dated December 2023 but it's what David Crisafulli, the Leader of the LNP, went into the October 2024 election with in terms of their platform. Page 16 states that they are committed to "Properly maintaining our power plants" and on page 17 they say about the Labor government that was in power at the time: "...they continue to waste billions of dollars on project blowouts and scare away investment from our State. A key priority for Queenslanders is responsible economic management that respects their money. An LNP Government will use a reinstated Productivity Commission to ensure every dollar collected achieves the maximum possible value for Queenslanders."

In that light, spending over $1 billion on what the LNP may consider to be a project where the economics in terms of ROI may not stack up as well as what the previous Labor government would have the Queensland people believe, may be an easy target for running a red line through; i.e. low hanging fruit in terms of the LNP's "more responsible public spending" agenda. They need to show plenty of savings in order to cover their spending promises, and there was a fair bit of that in that document. It's often the case that a change of government results in projects that were championed by the previous government being scrapped, and that's what we're seeing here.

I don't have a strong opinion either way - firstly because I don't live in Queensland, and secondly because while I'm all for developing renewable energy generation and storage solutions - and I'm all for an energy transition as long as it's done sensibly and responsibly without putting excessive strain on energy consumers in terms of additional costs - I don't know if this particular project made enough economic sense at this point in time. I just aren't that educated on this topic. So I have no dog in this fight. I'm just calling it as I see it. Political reality.

@Bear77 I have a similar view to you on this. On the economics, there would be a lot of assumptions to make the project work, and there's a lot of uncertainty around them.

Simply taking a more bearish (or balanced?) view on those assumptions would pull the rug out from under it.

So, with the economics able to swing either way, its politics that carries the day.

With the impending 100d Olympic Games facility review nearing completion, any additional 1B savings they can find lying under a bed will, help offset what is going to be an expensive infrastructure build. It will be more palatable to sell a sporting infrastructure build, by reporting you have made savings in other areas.