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Best of the week — the five most popular stories among readers, July 15 – July 19, 2024

Manufacturing News




What were the five biggest stories of the week? Here’s what visitors to @AuManufacturing were reading.

5) Fortescue backpedals on green hydrogen, heads downstream

Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue has backpedaled on its ambitions in green hydrogen, reorganising the mining and energy company and focusing more on familiar downstream green energy opportunities.

The company, which has taken what some observers call a ‘scattergun’ approach to green hydrogen opportunities across the globe, has simplified its corporate structure, merging the mining and energy businesses into one.

The business retains CEOs at the head of the two businesses while sharing executives across the two businesses rather than having two separate structures, making 700 workers redundant in the process.

4) Wanting Australian drones but buying foreign instead

Australia has clear defence industry priorities including developing a local drone manufacturing sector.

Here Dr Peter Layton examines Defence’s recent drone purchases, and asks why then, do we buy overseas made drones and not the best value or most advanced ones at that?

3) Is BlueScope making a mistake betting on blast furnaces in a green steel era?

Just as the domestic electricity grid is making quick progress towards decarbonisation, so too are industrial processes such as steelmaking, writes Peter Roberts.

Australia’s two primary steelmakers have taken different courses in moving towards lower carbon iron and steels.

2) Gas has a future but will be used less often – Bowen

The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen has put forward what he called the government’s ‘sensible (and) pragmatic’ approach to the future of gas in Australia’s electricity grid.

Answering questions at the National Press Club, Bowen said that on the one extreme there was the Coalition with what he called ‘a gas bin fire’ of a policy, and at the other the Greens who say gas has no role to play in the system going forward.

Bowen said: “I disagree with both of those. And the government disagrees with both of those extreme arguments. And they’re equally unhelpful.”

1) No room for nuclear power, unless the Coalition switches off your solar

Before renewables came along, coal-fired power stations pumped out electricity (and carbon emissions) 24 hours a day. But now, this type of “always on” baseload power is no longer necessary or commercially viable.

This is one of many reasons why the Coalition’s proposed nuclear strategy is flawed. Even if nuclear power was cheap, which it isn’t, it would have to be the least appropriate energy source going around, writes Bill Grace, Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia.

Picture: Fortescue’s Gladstone electrolyser plant (credit Fortescue)

 



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