In one of the most spectacular disasters of the 20th century, the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship burst into flames while attempting to dock at the Lakehurst naval air station near Manchester in New Jersey on 6th May 1937.

The disaster killed 35 people and brought the global airship era to a very abrupt end. While the initial cause of the accident was never determined, the fatal flaw of the Hindenburg – still the biggest aircraft ever built—was that it was kept in the air by 200,000 cubic metres of highly flammable hydrogen gas which burst into a gigantic fireball and destroyed it.

That’s a lot of hot air, and it looks like the history of hydrogen is repeating itself right here in Australia. It turns out that Labor’s dream of ‘green’ hydrogen, at which it has thrown about $8 billion of taxpayers’ money, is just a lot of hot air. Billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest – who in 2021 told the National Press Club hydrogen was the “miracle molecule…clean as the day is long” – has abandoned his unrealistic ‘green’ hydrogen production targets and stuck a knife in the heart of Labor’s fantasy about making Australia a “renewable energy superpower”.

‘Green’ hydrogen was the heart of this fantasy. It was supposed to provide the portable fuel alternative to natural gas and petroleum. But now the business case has collapsed, not that it was very solid to begin with. Labor’s net zero fantasy relies strongly on technologies and science which literally don’t exist yet.

It turns out that ‘green’ hydrogen – producing the gas from water with electrolysers using only solar or wind energy – is not technologically feasible or even remotely economic. Electrolysers producing hydrogen need a strong, constant flow of electricity that intermittent wind and solar can’t provide. It takes 45 kilowatt-hours of electricity to make one kilogram of hydrogen; at the Queensland cost of 32.6c/kWh, that’s almost $15 a kilo without factoring in the cost of inputs like water and labour. To be economic, hydrogen needs to be produced at no more than $2 per kilo.

It’s never going to happen with renewables driving our electricity costs so high. Forty-nine hydrogen projects have been completely abandoned in Australia, including Twiggy’s proposed 500 MW plant at Gibson Island in Brisbane, which was key to Labor’s plans. Another 88 projects are not operational because no final investment decision has been made. Only a dozen are operational, and only two relate to ‘green’ hydrogen – a small pilot project at the tiny Western Australian town of Denham. This is the reality of the “miracle molecule” supposed to make Australia a renewable energy superpower.

The fact is that Australia truly could have been an energy superpower, possessing some of the richest natural energy reserves on the planet. The shared commitment to net zero emissions by Labor, the Greens, the Liberals, and the Nationals means it will never happen. Only One Nation is committed to an independent energy policy that prioritises affordability and reliability over the cult of climate change.