Mr BAYLEY – Coming back to the Hydrogen Hub, minister, the Budget is really explicit in some of the risks that are identified there. Budget paper 1 talks about the fact that:
Developing hydrogen export capacity at Bell Bay is expected to require new infrastructure investment, including port water transmission upgrades.
We’ve just talked about that.
This infrastructure may be delivered by government businesses, although most capital costs are anticipated to be recovered through commercial arrangements with end users.
How are you managing that risk as it stands at the moment in terms of decisions around investing upfront in some of that, so-called enabling infrastructure, versus the negotiations that obviously are yet to come in relation to new investors and the hydrogen producers signing up to take on that. You would have already delivered it. How are you going to force them into paying and recovering those costs?
Mr DUIGAN – I believe that’s the nature of the challenge.
We want these things to occur; we want the hub to be there to facilitate new industries in Tasmania, but we can’t put the government in the position where it’s taking all the risk, and I understand that and I accept that.
Timeframes here are somewhat challenging in terms of meeting up, particularly as to the point Ms Finlay was raising – agricultural expectations on water and what will be the industrial expectations on water and will those timeframes neatly meet? It looks like possibly not and again, you know for transmission augmentation, we know what we’d like to do, but there needs to be a business case to support it. Those government‑owned businesses will need to operate commercially and derive a return from their undertakings for the Tasmanian people and not doing things on spec. I don’t think we can do things on spec.
Mr BAYLEY – In relation to the carbon input into these e-fuels, be it hydrogen, methanol and the like, can you confirm that there will be no native forest biomass going into those productions? I know some of these companies have identified they will be plantation only. Is that something that you as a government, and as energy minister, would be willing to prescribe to make sure that native forest biomass is explicitly excluded from these kinds of developments?
Mr DUIGAN – I am not sure if I’ve got it in front of me and had a similar conversation the other day – certainly in the first instance, it’s plantation forestry residues that is what is contemplated. So, currently, the waste product of plantation forestry. If that proves not to be enough, and the modelling shows that there’s enough of that, the next would be to move into the plantation chip base, and again, there’s more than enough of that. So, I don’t think there’s any expectation of native forest inputs.
Mr BAYLEY – As a result, is that something you think the government should explicitly rule out and make sure to give confidence more broadly to community and/or investors or others? Is it something you think the government should actually legislate, regulate or otherwise preclude from being available to those kinds of developments into the future?
Mr DUIGAN – The government is and remains a committed supporter of native forestry. If there is a way to use residues from native forestry more effectively, then I don’t see a problem with that. But I take the point these are companies involved in providing e‑fuels and they may have a different view of those sorts of things.
Mr BAYLEY – Noting, of course – we’ve heard the argument about waste products and tails wagging dogs in the end. We saw that with the wood chip industry through the 80s, 90s, 2000s and beyond. But it’s not something you think the government should actually regulate or legislate, to give security to those companies and the community going forward?
Mr DUIGAN – I don’t think it’s a front‑of‑mind issue just yet.
