DONE UNDER?

What a difference a year can make. Back in the heady days of 2024, the Pilbara region of Western Australia seemed on course to become the hub for a new wave of green hydrogen-derived bunker fuels. Mining corporations looking to decarbonise their operations, including shipping, helped by massive subsidies from the government, would use e-fuels generated via the centrepiece 26 GW Australian Renewable Energy Hub (AREH), while exports to Asian and European markets would go a long way to clearing early availability hurdles and help uptake across the shipping industry in Australia and internationally.

And then 2025 rolled around and a lot of feet started getting very cold. With initial costs of the technology higher than expected, practical barriers still needing overcoming, and uptake uncertain, the political winds shifted.

First the West Australian government dropped plans to introduce hard emissions limits which would have helped drive hydrogen’s uptake; the mining-heavy state was the only one in Australia without 2050 legislation. The state’s Liberal Party then went further and joined its counterparts elsewhere in Australia, by rejecting net-zero policies altogether. Then the Queensland government pulled financial support for its own mooted hydrogen export hub. Meanwhile the federal opposition has turned against previously bipartisan government hydrogen tax credits while the government refocused its hydrogen programs to projects that will bring down costs and overcome hurdles in demand as well as supply.

BP, which owned a 63.7% stake in AREH, then announced in July 2025 that it was out. This followed a company-wide “strategy reset” to head off a revolt by shareholders opposed to long-term investments in post-fossil energy, reducing green energy spending to less than 5% of BP’s outlay.

The lack of state political incentives that would make it easier to bring hydrogen costs in line with conventional fuels was in turn a factor that led even iron and green energy company Fortescue, which in 2024 participated in the first demonstration of ammonia bunkering in Australia, to scale back or shift plans to develop hydrogen fuel production and bunkering. The company was similarly deeply disappointed by the failure to move forward with net-zero rules at the IMO in October.