<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/start-date-for-australias-biggest-renewable-energy-hub-pushed-out-to-end-of-decade/>
"Global oil giant bp is now aiming for 2029 as the potential start date for
electricity generation from its $55 billion Australian Renewable Energy Hub
(AREH) near the Pilbara.
The giant 26 gigawatt (GW) project, bigger than Sun Cable in the Northern
Territory and likely to be the biggest in the country, has had a series of
suggested deadlines since it was first mooted in 2017 by international energy
project developers InterContinental Energy and CWP Global.
When bp bought into the then-Asian Renewable Energy Hub in 2022, the timeline
was for financial close to be achieved in 2024 and the first power in 2026.
Later that shifted to 2028 for either first power, or green hydrogen exports.
The current deadlines flag green hydrogen production for local green steel by
the early 2030s, according to the project’s new website, and ammonia exports by
the mid-2030s.
A spokesperson for bp declined to comment on when financial close will be
reached, when construction will begin, or even to clarify if the project’s
start date had been delayed, as reported in Western Australia media.
In July this year, GHD was named to build the Pilbara Green Link, the critical
transmission line to connect local utility Horizon Power’s infrastructure with
AREH. GHD said preliminary engineering will only be finished by March 2025.
While bp beds down the details for AREH, it has also back-tracked on a goal to
cut oil production by 40 per cent from 2019 levels come 2030. That target had
already been reduced to 25 per cent, and will now be dropped altogether.
Instead, the company is green lighting a series of new oil fields for
development, including the massive Gulf of Mexico Kaskida deepwater oil field,
and the Carbon Tracker Initiative expects it to do the same for the deep water
Tiber field in 2025 as well as expand production in Kuwait and bring on new
fields in Iraq.
Big Oil’s attempt to become ‘Big Energy’ has come unmoored in the last two
years. Shell began divesting its clean energy holdings in 2023, and in the same
year large oil companies reduced their fossil fuel divestments and allocated
more money to upstream assets, according to
Bloomberg NEF.
Oil companies have not proved to be very good at investing in green energy, as
the new technologies cannot yet match the historically windfall returns of oil
while at the same time being more complicated to fund."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
