German-Australian funding initiative HyGATE

The initiative HyGATE focuses on laying the foundation for German-Australian supply chains for green hydrogen. Australia possesses large available land area, high solar irradiation and good wind conditions — making it a major potential producer and exporter of green hydrogen, which Germany will need in the future. Accordingly, Germany and Australia have agreed to strengthen their cooperation in research and industrial partnerships, and to promote hydrogen and its derivatives trade between the two countries in the long term.

HyGATE (German-Australian Hydrogen Innovation and Technology Incubator) supports practice-relevant pilot, demonstration and research projects along the hydrogen supply chain. It builds on the preparatory work of the feasibility study HySupply.

German and Australian partners from research, industry and civil society are supported by HyGATE to facilitate their collaboration and promote innovation processes in both countries. The projects selected under HyGATE act as pioneers for building a global hydrogen economy.

These are the projects of the HyGATE programme:

• The purpose of the project ScaleH2 is to build a hydrogen export value chain from the Illawarra region in New South Wales to Germany. Concrete options from production in Australia to consumption in Germany are to be technically realised and further developed.

• The project CFE-Pilot advances a novel capillary-fed water electrolysis unit, which can produce green hydrogen cost-effectively with significantly improved efficiency. The aim is particularly the scaling of this new technology.

• The project 24×7 Solar Powered Methanol Production (SolarMethanol) aims to establish a plant complex to produce about 7,500 tons of methanol per year in South Australia. The novel combination of solar thermal energy, energy storage and a flexible methanol plant enables round-the-clock production.