Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses Australia’s emerging hydrogen sector and its hub development model to reveal the co-dependence between old resource frontiers (fossil fuels, heavy industry) and new carbon frontiers (clean energy technologies and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Paper long abstract:

Given the urgency to both decarbonize and secure a dominant role in the global competition to become a ‘green’ industrial powerhouse, the Australian government is heavily invested in supporting hydrogen initiatives to quickly scale. The preferred model for hydrogen development is the establishment of so-called, “hydrogen hubs” (sometimes referred to as renewable energy industrial precincts or net-zero industrial clusters) which will co-locate hydrogen supply and demand with existing energy and export infrastructure to create a “springboard to scale”, lowering transportation costs and theoretically generating greater certainty for potential suppliers that there will be demand and assuring potential users that there will be a reliable supply of hydrogen (Commonwealth of Australia 2019, 34). However, the hub model assumes a circular logic, where a speculative hydrogen supply legitimates the expansion of an existing or new heavy industry, by promising it will eventually offset or replace the carbon emissions of that industry even if not yet assured. This paper draws on a content analysis of plans, policy, and consultancy documents on Australia’s emerging hydrogen sector to reveal a co-dependence between old resource frontiers (fossil fuels, heavy industry) and new carbon frontiers (clean energy technologies and carbon capture and storage (CCS)). While drawing on pasts and appealing to futures, this present convergence is shaping the infrastructural form of the latest stage of decarbonization, encouraging the development of interconnected assemblages that link fossil fuel, heavy industry, carbon-capture, offsetting, and clean energy (Neale et al 2023).