National Hydrogen Strategy Issues Papers

Australia has a robust and successful industry-led natural gas safety regime, which can be readily adapted to safely and efficiently accommodate hydrogen gas alongside natural gas. Such an approach would ensure excellent public safety outcomes, while at the same time being economically efficient by minimising unnecessary regulatory barriers, duplication and compliance costs for investors.

Hydrogen and natural gas are both combustible gases that are transported in pressurised infrastructure and used for exactly the same purpose - heat. There are more similarities than differences. They will be mixed together in the first applications e.g. via the proposed gas network blending target of 10% hydrogen by 2030. There are already a few hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other gas pipelines licensed in Australia under the same regime.

The safety regimes for gas, embodied in AS 2885 and AS 4564, are risk based and require competent persons to make informed judgements, as opposed to a prescriptive regime that provides a ‘recipe’ for anyone to follow. New data and information will of course be required to make those judgements (and that is a key purpose of the Future Fuels CRC), but the principles of safe decision making will not be different.

By way of example, all of the principles and mitigation measures in AS 2885 for keeping hydrogen infrastructure safe from third party interference will be exactly the same as for natural gas infrastructure. In terms of consequence assessment for a catastrophic failure, all the principles will be the same, the only thing different between hydrogen and methane will be the measurement length as they’ll have different dispersion patterns.

Further, AS 2885 has been very adaptive and is world renowned for its ability to bring research outcomes into common practice. As hydrogen is better understood, we already have the systems in place to bring the learnings into practice. It should be noted that there are differences between design safety, which is what AS 2885 embodies, and ‘operator practices’ which are more prescriptive but likewise can be adapted to take into account hydrogen alongside natural gas.

Companies in the Australian natural gas business are very conservative and have an excellent track record when it comes to safety; it is not in their commercial or legal interest to be otherwise. This ingrained safety culture applies just the same to transporting hydrogen as it does to natural gas.

APGA considers that industry is very well placed to leverage our existing safety culture and track record with natural gas in the rollout of an Australian hydrogen industry.

Australia has a robust and successful industry-led natural gas safety regime, which can be readily adapted to safely and efficiently accommodate hydrogen gas alongside natural gas. Such an approach would ensure excellent public safety outcomes, while at the same time being economically efficient by minimising unnecessary regulatory barriers and compliance costs for investors.

Hydrogen and natural gas are both combustible gases that are transported in pressurised infrastructure and used for exactly the same purpose - heat. There are more similarities than differences. They will be mixed together in the first applications e.g. via the proposed gas network blending target of 10% hydrogen by 2030. There are already a few hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other gas pipelines licensed in Australia under the same regime.

The safety regimes for gas, embodied in AS 2885 and AS 4564, are risk based and require competent persons to make informed judgements, as opposed to a prescriptive regime that provides a ‘recipe’ for anyone to follow. New data and information will of course be required to make those judgements (and that is a key purpose of the Future Fuels CRC), but the principles of safe decision making will not be different.

By way of example, all of the principles and mitigation measures in AS 2885 for keeping hydrogen infrastructure safe from third party interference will be exactly the same as for natural gas infrastructure. In terms of consequence assessment for a catastrophic failure, all the principles will be the same, the only thing different between hydrogen and methane will be the measurement length as they’ll have different dispersion patterns.

Further, AS 2885 has been very adaptive and is world renowned for its ability to bring research outcomes into common practice. As hydrogen is better understood, we already have the systems in place to bring the learnings into practice. It should be noted that there are differences between design safety, which is what AS 2885 embodies, and ‘operator practices’ which are more prescriptive but likewise can be adapted to take into account hydrogen alongside natural gas.

Companies in the Australian natural gas business are very conservative and have an excellent track record when it comes to safety; it is not in their commercial or legal interest to be otherwise. This ingrained safety culture applies just the same to transporting hydrogen as it does to natural gas.

APGA considers that industry is very well placed to leverage our existing safety culture and track record with natural gas in the rollout of an Australian hydrogen industry.