SYDNEY, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Hydrogen produced from brown coal will be shipped from Victoria, Australia to Japan as part of a world-first agreement.
The proposed plant, which will be run by Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, would produce liquid hydrogen that would be exported to Japan to fuel hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Maritime authorities from both countries signed an agreement on the deal in Canberra, but Victoria's acting Resources Minister Philip Dalidakis said the project was still "in the very early stages."
He said that the Victorian government and Kawasaki had been working together on an engineering study to investigate the feasibility of producing hydrogen from brown coal.
Dalidakis told the Guardian Australia on Friday that the government was "keen to explore all serious investments that have the potential to create much needed jobs in the Latrobe Valley."
The Latrobe Valley's Hazelwood power station, the dirtiest power station in Australia, will close at the end of March, leaving 1,000 people in the region unemployed.
Patrick Moriarty, an alternative energy and hydrogen fuel expert from Monash University, said the proposal was "a way of making brown coal look green."
"It would be a newer plant ... so it could be said to be cleaner on that side of it," Moriarty told the Guardian.
"But it would do nothing for the climate in terms of how you would use it."
Tania Constable, CEO of Melbourne-based carbon capture and storage technology company CO2CRC, said it was a reasonable proposition because the volume of brown coal left in the Latrobe Valley was "massive and cheap."
"It is completely reasonable to burn brown coal and turn it both into hydrogen-based electricity for Victoria and export the hydrogen for other purposes, as long as the CO2 from the brown coal can be captured and stored," Constable told the Guardian.
