Electric cars dominate clean-energy talk but Australia’s abundance of sunlight, wind and CSIRO know-how has put hydrogen motoring right into the local conversation.

This week in the US, Hyundai made its initial sale of its latest hydrogen (or fuel-cell) car, the Nexo.

The ACT Government has ordered 20 Nexo SUVs as part of a $23 million renewable fuels testing program. The car can be refuelled in five minutes and has a range of 600-700km.

With these petrol-like stats, but zero emissions, some pundits see hydrogen as having advantages over electricity in our land of vast distances.

Hydrogen is also well suited to urging trucks, buses and trains, heavy lifting now done mainly via diesel power.

An even bigger boost to hydrogen’s prospects came in the Federal Government’s recently announced National Hydrogen Strategy. The program seeks to fast-track the use of Australian hydrogen as a power source and export earner to countries such as Japan and South Korea.

Regarding the latter, some industry players are likening the export potential of hydrogen to Australia’s lucrative liquefied natural gas export industry. But liquefied hydrogen’s low density makes it uneconomic to transport over long distances, so that’s where CSIRO cleverness has come in.

The scientific body’s boffins there have nutted out what has been termed hydrogen’s missing link — a way ammonia can be converted back to hydrogen.

Being a higher-density chemical than hydrogen, ammonia could be shipped viably then converted to hydrogen on arrival in Asia. As such, the product is being termed “renewable” hydrogen.

WA’s North West is well placed to get in on the hydrogen export act because of its sun, port facilities and proximity to Asian markets.