Report on the Inaugural Hydrogen Storage and Production Forum

The first Hydrogen Storage and Production Conference took place at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, October 2022. The conference, in the majority, was attended by members of the Australian hydrogen research community. It featured 20 presentations from across Australia and overseas, including delegates from industry and local government agencies. It successfully integrated the simultaneous streaming for ~15 virtual participants from across the globe within the on-campus event attended by ~35 delegates.

Unlike a traditional conference, the majority of speakers were invited presenters, with each being selected to represent a particular expertise in an area of key concern for the successful implementation of large-scale hydrogen economy in Australia and elsewhere - with a key focus being on the identification of Underground Hydrogen Storage (UHS) opportunities.  

UHS is a large-scale solution that can repurpose both expertise and infrastructure from existing petroleum industry personnel and facilities to meet this need. With the abandonment costs of reservoirs around Australia predicted to cost $76 billion and with currently over 17,000 employees in the sector, the transformation of this industry to clean energy is an enormous opportunity for Australia to capitalise on. Simultaneously, Australia has a growing network of renewable energy generation through solar and wind farms.

All delegates were given the opportunity to engage, not only through Q&A sessions following each individual presentation, but also through a parallel poster session, opportunities for networking at the end of Day 1, as well as through the participation in an extended discussion session on Hydrogen Storage: The Pathway for the Future at the end of Day 2. An ARC-ITTC application is currently being planned for 2023 to synthesise key perspectives of this discussion group into one training centre in UHS, which will aim to foster close partnerships between university-based researchers and other research end-users to provide innovative Higher Degree by Research (HDR) and postdoctoral training, for end-user focused research industries that will be vital to Australia's clean energy future.

The Organising Committee gratefully acknowledges the support from the New South Wales Government, by providing the funds to organise and host this conference at UNSW, and we are planning to welcome past and new participants to Adelaide for another event, currently anticipated to take place in 2024.

Organising Committee

Peyman Mostaghimi (UNSW), Ulrike Schacht (UoA), Ryan Armstrong (UNSW), Ying Da Wang (UNSW), Yu Jing (UNSW), Christoph Arns (UNSW), Stuart Clark (UNSW), Alireza Salmachi (UoA), Scott Higgs (UNSW)

This report was written by Dr Ulrike Schacht, Centre for Energy Technology and Australian School of Petroleum and Energy Resources researcher at the University of Adelaide.