> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # And Now Another Sad Blow - URL: https://goodoil.news/and-now-another-sad-blow/ - Published: 2026-09-08T02:00:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T02:00:48.000Z - Description: The world’s largest renewable energy proposal was planned for the best place on Earth (for renewables) but it still can’t make any numbers add up. - Author: Reproduced with permission - Tags: AUS Politics, Business, Energy Security [**Joanne Nova**](https://www.cfact.org/2026/09/05/its-another-sad-blow-to-what-once-was-the-worlds-largest-renewable-energy-proposal/?ref=goodoil.news) *A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host. Author of* The Skeptic’s Handbook. ![](https://joannenova.com.au/wp-content/areh-project-site.jpg) [**The Australian Renewable Energy Hub**](https://www.areh.com.au/about-AREH.html?ref=goodoil.news) (AREH) was a glorious $55 billion dream that was going to cover 6,500 square kilometres with 1,700 wind turbines and 11,000 megawatts of solar panels. In theory it would produce 26 gigawatts of power – which is as much as the Australian national electricity grid does on average, and that serves 23 million people.\* The site was like God’s gift to renewables — a vast empty plain in a first world country, near the equator, with a soft socialist government and with more hours of sunshine per year than most places on Earth. If mega-renewables can’t make it here, they can’t make it anywhere. But the big plan has suddenly shrunk to nearly half its peak size. In the original fantasy it was called the *Asian Renewable Energy Hub* because it was supposed to pump electricity via a giant undersea cable to Jakarta or Singapore. When that plan fell in a hole, it was reinvented as a green hydrogen and ammonia plant that would export these wonder-fuels to Asia by ship. Part of the dream was to power up 14GW of electrolyzers to smash apart the water molecules and make hydrogen, except there aren’t any water molecules there, so they would have to bring them in from the Indian ocean and desalinate them first. Just a minor hitch. But together that would release the hydrogen miracle, which would then create the wonder of ammonia, which would be used, henceforth, to create the biblical “Green Steel”. It was a product everyone wanted, but no one wanted to pay for. ![](https://joannenova.com.au/wp-content/areh-hydrogen-renewables-hub-nw-wa.jpg) [Source BP](https://www.bp.com/en%5Fau/australia/home/accelerating-australia/hydrogen/australian-renewable-energy-hub.html?ref=goodoil.news) The project in the vast arid-lands of Western Australia was so ambitious they were going to have to [build a whole new small town on the coast, with its own desalination plant](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-10/renewable-energy-hub-ditches-asian-cable-for-ammonia/12862916?ref=goodoil.news) – because rainfall is so low. ‘We need to have lakes,’ the project manager said. *Sure*. Unfortunately the same thing that makes a site perfect for solar power is exactly the reason that almost no one wants to live there: it’s baking hot, waterless, barely inhabited and thus ‘available’ for acres of solar panels. (Everything that makes it good for solar and wind power makes it horrible for the economics of collecting all that ‘free’ energy). Let’s just say wages need to be *high*. The sun is cheap in the Pilbara, but telecoms, food, water, air conditioning, houses, and lakes are not. Nor are 5,000 kilometer subsea cables, or 1,000 miles of transmission lines to major population centers. BP abandoned the project a year ago, following in the footsteps of Vestas, Macquarie and others that had abandoned it before BP did. In January[ our government gave it $22 million](https://arena.gov.au/projects/intercontinental-energy-decarbonising-the-pilbara-and-beyond/?ref=goodoil.news) to study how to make hydrogen projects work in the Pilbara. Pfft, went that cash. Now the owners have downgraded the 26GW venture back to a 15GW project that was approved in 2020\. Forget the big export plans, now they just hope to power, you guessed it, some miners and data-centers in Port Hedland with a small 1GW starter. Ammonia, may or may not be produced, closer to Port Hedland. > [Australian Renewable Energy Hub’s $50b plan shrinks](https://www.boilingcold.com.au/australian-renewable-energy-hubs-50b-plan-shrinks-and-drops-hydrogen/?ref=goodoil.news) > **– by Peter Milne, *Boiling Cold*** > > The size of Australia’s largest renewable energy project has been cut by nearly half, and the remote Pilbara site will no longer produce ammonia from green hydrogen. > > The company spokeswoman said the project strategy subsequently evolved toward supplying renewable electricity and hydrogen to support industry in the Pilbara, including green iron, mining decarbonisation and critical minerals processing. There is still just that small detail about needing 550 km of high voltage power lines to reach the customers: > To succeed, the project needs the [Pilbara Green Link](https://www.ghd.com/en/about-ghd/news/03-07-2024-ghd-to-deliver-preliminary-engineering-for-pilbara-green-link?ref=boilingcold.com.au) to connect AREH and the Pilbara power network with 550km of high-voltage 330kV transmission lines. Perry Williams and Nick Evans in the *Australian* explain that BP abandoned it because customers just weren’t willing to pay: > [Intercontinental Energy and CWP Global’s Australian Renewable Energy Hub scales back hydrogen](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/intercontinental-energy-and-cwp-globals-australian-renewable-energy-hub-scales-back-hydrogen/news-story/499fd66115c8706de7ad81d4cb30be9e?ref=goodoil.news) > > BP later revealed its decision to depart the Hub was sealed [by the reluctance of future customers to back up their support for green power](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bp-blames-customer-cold-feet-for-withdrawal-from-55bn-pilbara-australian-renewable-energy-hub/news-story/f312d0347ddc3ac81dc2561654c122d3?ref=goodoil.news) with financial commitments. > > The oil major’s country president Lucy Nation said at the time its most likely customers – widely understood to include large iron ore miners operating in the Pilbara and countries such as Japan – had significantly delayed plans to commit to long-term offtake agreements. **And Chris Bowen’s Big Hydrogen plan has reached 0.2 per cent of it’s target!** > Released in 2024 by Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the National Hydrogen Strategy set out the government’s ambition to boost production of renewable-generated hydrogen at a competitive cost, setting a target of 500,000 tonnes by 2030. > > However, federal bureaucrats in May confirmed that domestic production levels were currently 1100 tonnes – [amounting to 0.2 per cent of the target](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/too-early-to-tell-if-australia-will-meet-green-hydrogen-targets-officials-say/news-story/5432762b375af08008cc85f804e8128e?ref=goodoil.news). This was once a giant flagship proposal that pulled in not just BP but InterContinental Energy, CWP Global, and Macquaries Green Investment Group. Scores of engineers and entrepeneurs must have tried to make the numbers work as they chased the solar-wind-hydrogen fairy hobgoblin. Yet here we are again, like an impossible Escher puzzle. The illusion of ‘free energy’ beguiles the human brain, but the cost of collecting, storing and transporting the invisible fire fools us every time. We just have to find an empty first world desert near the equator and 10 million people, and an endlessly replenishing hydroelectricity dam and it will all be perfect. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ \*The NEM serves 23 million people, but not Western Australians or Northern Territorians. This article was originally published by [JoNova ](https://www.joannenova.com.au/2026/09/its-another-sad-blow-to-what-once-was-the-worlds-largest-renewable-energy-proposal/?ref=goodoil.news)and republished by [CFACT](https://www.cfact.org/2026/09/05/its-another-sad-blow-to-what-once-was-the-worlds-largest-renewable-energy-proposal/?ref=goodoil.news).