A Sydney startup company that uses farmstock waste to power the agricultural sector has made Lane Cove West Business Park its base of operations. The Park is located behind the Lane Cove West Public School; however, access is via Sam Johnson Way.
Green Hydrogen
To achieve this, Hydgene Renewables is utilising biomass to manufacture green hydrogen. The aim is to reduce the agricultural industry’s carbon footprint while powering it efficiently.
Dr Louise Brown, co-developer of the production system and Chief Executive Officer, says the process is still in its infancy. Still, they are looking to tackle the fossil fuel industry.
“We’re on a mission to de-fossilise the hydrogen sector. So hydrogen today, or at least 99 per cent of it, comes from the fossil fuel industry. It’s made from natural gas and coal, so it’s really dirty,” Dr Brown told ITC, giving us a tour of the lab’s unseen facilities.
“At Hydgene, we’re on a mission to green the production of hydrogen and do it in a way that’s quite different to what you typically hear about, which is the splitting of water from electrolysis. What we do is we convert biomass, or plant-based material, in particular the sugars in that plant material, into green hydrogen, so it has a really clean footprint of production.”
Hay into Ammonia
Green hydrogen is typically created through wind or solar initiatives to power things with electricity; Hydgene Renewables’ direction is unique as their use of biomass mainly manufactures chemicals but also creates the opportunity for a circular economy.
Australian farmers will harvest and sell their agricultural waste to the Hydgene lab. The team will then convert that waste into green hydrogen energy and sell it back to the farmers.
The hydrogen created in the Lane Cove West Business Park lab is used to produce ammonia, which is then used to make green fertilisers.
“Fertilisers, of course, we need for the food that we all eat, and that comes today from the fossil fuel industry,” Dr Brown said.
“We want to use their [farmers] waste biomass material. It’s the straw stubble that’s left after a harvest, that’s typically burnt on the field or goes into landfill and creates emissions, we can use that, recycle it, or upcycle it, take the sugars, convert it to hydrogen for ammonia, for fertiliser, which can go back into the ground for the next season of crop that the farmers will plant.”
Various materials can be used to fuel this process. Old hay, wheat straw, and barley straw were a few different feedstock types that were tested. However, another system co-developer and Hydgene Renewable Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Kerstin Petroll, says the range of materials is only expanding.
“We tested about 130 different types of feedstocks, it can also be agave, it can be residues from the sugar cane industry, but it can also be more crude, coming from wastewater treatment plants from breweries,” she said.
“Microorganisms typically have a favourite glucose or have a favourite sugar component. We engineered our microorganism to utilise all varieties of sugars so everything that you can find in biomass, it can actually use and convert into hydrogen.”
The start-up’s plant has received both State and Federal funding through grants supporting their technology.
Why Choose Lane Cove West Business Park for their Lab?
Previously, the Hydgene Renewables team was in the university sector at Macquarie University for core research and development.
However, they are now in the stage where they must manufacture their catalyst to scale. The equipment at universities typically cannot accommodate this.
Fortunately, the Lane Cove facility had a suitable environment that catered to the company’s R&D and manufacturing needs.
Hydrogen Hurdles: Balancing Green Dreams with Reality
The federal government will incentivise the agricultural industry to implement green hydrogen as pressures mount to reduce its carbon footprint. However, the production of the chemical element is not all pros.
For starters, production is expensive. In early February 2025, the Queensland Government decided it would not fund the Central Queensland Hydrogen Project — an initiative backed by a grant from the Stanwell Corporation, among other international companies—and planned to ship green hydrogen to Japan and Singapore.
Although the project was expected to boost Central Queensland’s economy by $8.9 billion and has already received offers of significant financial support from the federal government, the Queensland state government stated that the project’s financial demands would be too costly.
Hydrogen is highly volatile and flammable, so transporting the product using tanks on trucks can be dangerous. Compared to fossil fuels, it also takes more trucks to transport less of it due to Its low specific volumetric energy density.
Transportation is also an issue. Although Hydgene Renewables has developed ways to effectively and stably store hydrogen in their lab, transporting it to buyers can be troublesome.
“The challenge with those projects is, how do you put it on a ship and get it to customers that sit in Japan or Germany, and when you start to look at the numbers behind moving hydrogen, it’s become quite expensive,” Dr Brown shared.
“So where we’re different is we produce that hydrogen where it’s needed. We take manufacturing on-site, where the customer will use the product so that you can eliminate those distribution costs. So we are quite different in our approach to it.”
With constantly developing research and the ability to manufacture hydrogen via various renewable resources, the field still presents promising methods for reducing emissions.
No Single Method for Creating Green Hydrogen
There is no singular method for creating superior green hydrogen in all categories. Manufacturing it via electrolysis – using solar or wind methods – is best for powering things electronically while creating hydrogen through biomass, which lends itself to chemical manufacturing.
“We believe that the future energy mix will be a mix. It won’t be a single technology that will dominate the market, and that’s important, and I think it also increases our chance of success, really allowing the energy transition to be successful,” Dr Brown said.
“I think the future mix to hit Net Zero targets requires us to electrify everything we can, and that’s where our renewable sources, like wind and solar need to be focused on those activities where we’re using those green electrons for transport,” Dr Petroll added.
“That’s where the synergies are. We don’t want to be providing hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cars, because we think this is where electrifying would be offended. You need both. The renewable input we have is biomass… we will take that biomass for chemical manufacturing, for the chemicals that we need that we can’t electrify. So it is ammonia, methanol, sustainable aviation fuel.”
Next Steps
Hydgene plans to demonstrate its technology in the field in 2025, with ambitions to deploy commercial demo plants within the next few years.
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