With investment choices expected to be made in the coming months rather than years, several of South Korea’s largest corporations are circling WA’s booming clean hydrogen sector.
Alannah MacTiernan, the state’s first minister for the hydrogen industry, made this conclusion while delivering the keynote lecture at the Global H2 Conference in Goyang earlier this month.
The State decided to raise the manufacturing nation “up our pecking order of emphasis” as a result of a steady stream of “extremely senior delegations” from South Korea visiting Western Australia over the previous three months, according to Ms. MacTiernan.
The South Korean steel industry’s largest display at the conference was hosted by POSCO, which generated $82 billion in revenue last year.
The process of turning iron ore into pellets, a more valuable commodity now generated mostly using natural gas, is known as hot briquetting.
BHP built a 2.3 million-tonne-per-year HBI factory at Port Hedland for $1.55 billion in 1999, only to shut it down six years later and subsequently demolish it due to cost overruns, significant operating losses, and technical issues.
South Korea expects to utilize hydrogen as fuel in everything from motor cars to power plants and steel mills, increasing its annual domestic use from 130,000 tons in 2018 to over 5.3 million tons by 2040.
A small group of vast, family-owned industrial conglomerates called “chaebols,” which include brands like Samsung, LG, and Hyundai, rule the Asian nation.
Ms. MacTiernan claimed she left the meeting certain that the hydrogen industry in Western Australia was about to undergo a metamorphosis.
