Rethink Zero.
Australians can action affordable real zero outcomes today.
Beyond electrifying your home with affordable solar electricity, we are encouraging local councils to buy your excess household solar power as a pathway to provide you with lower council rates, cheaper real zero public transport, reasonably priced zero emission freight trucks on our roads, and to simplify our collective journey to zero waste.
Zero Waste to hydrogen boosts Rewiring Australia’s ambitions
Rewiring Australia outlines the case to Electrify Everything in our homes from our heating and cooling, hot water, cooking, and our private car travel. That team calculated the average Australian greenhouse gases from all that household energy and private vehicle use at 9,550 kg CO2e per annum.
In addition to our energy use at home, in our cars and on public transport, the average Australian household disposes of 930 kg of waste to landfill annually.
So including household’s greenhouse gas emissions from landfill waste, it increases the average household greenhouse gas emissions by 15% to 11,010 kg CO2e per annum.
Rethink Zero. encourages an enhanced eco-system of zero waste to hydrogen leveraging full electrifying homes with solar. This achieves greater greenhouse gas emission reductions and lowers household costs. This is complemented with a household’s private transport decision between government supported zero emission public transport and purchasing an electric car to be recharged at home.
4% of road vehicles contribute 28% of road greenhouse gas emissions
In delivering and transporting the goods and services we use at home Australian businesses drive:
4,000,000 light commercial vehicles emitting 18 million t CO2e annually, an average of 5 t CO2e for each vehicle,
800,000 heavy trucks and buses emitting 24 million t CO2e annually, an average of 30 t CO2e for each vehicle.
So less than 4% of Australian road vehicles contribute 28% of road transport greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Those 4.8 million light commercial vehicles, trucks and buses on Australian roads produce nearly as much Australia’s GHG as our 15.4 million household passenger cars.
Rethink Zero. targets circular economy outcomes to enable households and businesses to achieve greater overall greenhouse gas emissions reductions and to provide the Sub.Zero e-fuels to refuel and recharge the next generation of zero emission cars, trucks and buses.
40% cheaper to transition Australian trucks to zero emissions.
In number, one-third of Australian vehicles as driven by businesses produce a similar total level of greenhouse gases to our household passenger cars.
Transitioning business vehicles to zero emissions and diverting all waste from landfill reduces Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 12%.
Illustratively it would cost Australian households a total of $1,500 billion to buy 15.4 million new electric cars, with the average electric car cost well beyond the reach of most Australians.
By comparison, it is estimated to cost 40% less, approximately $900 billion, to transition our governments’ and businesses’ bus, truck, and vehicle road transport fleets to zero emission replacements.
With lower cost hydrogen from waste that is capable to be manufactured and stored locally the options exist in that fleet transition to utilise either battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicle powertrains.
Hydrogen as a versatile energy carrier.
Main stream solar and wind renewable energy infrastructure delivers 74% efficiency Well to Wheel for electric vehicles. As an intermittent power supply, we require some battery storage of the power that reduces these efficiencies. The infrastructure costs to build out this electric only network is significant.
Hydrogen when produced using renewable power sources like solar or wind is described as a low carbon energy source. Hydrogen is a versatile element, which has multiple uses. When used as an energy source hydrogen emits only water as a by-product.
Hydrogen as an energy carrier, like petrol or diesel, is capable to be converted to energy using suitable powertrain technologies. Various hydrogen powertrain technologies that in development include fuel cells, battery electric producing electrical power, and lower carbon combustion.
Given hydrogen can carry three times more energy per unit of weight than petrol or diesel, it is a complement to grid renewable energy.
Hydrogen as our lightest element though is difficult to store and transport, with significant energy losses and costs associated with the compression, storage and transport of hydrogen. Solving those issues with hydrogen produced locally reducing transport requirements and shelf life improves the use cases for hydrogen.
Hydrogen manufactured from water.
The most publicised way to produce low carbon hydrogen is known as electrolysis using a renewable power source. Electrolysis involves the chemical separation of the water into hydrogen gas and oxygen molecules.
Photosynthesis gives us cheap hydrogen. Photosynthesis uses sunlight and CO2 to "crack" the strong hydrogen-oxygen bond in water and produce the oxygen we breath. The "leftovers" are stored as hydrocarbons in plants, that in the end make up most of our non-recyclable waste.
Chemically, water contains 11.2% hydrogen molecules by weight.
Currently, with most electrolysis processes it takes over 4,000 kg of water to produce 200 kg of hydrogen.
Producing this volume as green hydrogen requires uses 12,000 kWh of solar, wind or other renewable power, roughly the equivalent of 50 solar panels plus battery storage.
The estimated carbon intensity of hydrogen manufactured using solar is around 2 kg CO2e per kg of hydrogen.
Circular economy with zero waste.
The circular economy objective is to maintain resources at their highest value for the longest possible time. Ideally in a way that reduces or abates the maximum amount of GHG. Consistent with this approach is the regeneration and recycling of landfill waste to manufacture a range of Sub.Zero products, namely Grade A Sub.Zero hydrogen gas, largely biogenic carbon dioxide gas molecules and IMBYROCK.
Zero waste to outcomes are delivered. Sub.Zero products manufactured often double the value outcomes from all other recycling activities. Those resources are all capable to up-cycled to generate the highest value outcome for the region and our communities.
The combination of the HPAG technology efficiency and the ability to utilise from the waste all resources processed provides a compelling acceleration of the regeneration and advanced recycling attribute of the circular economy and the waste hierarchy.
Australian businesses dispose to landfill an additional 1,070 kg per year of waste, when measured on a per household basis. That is, cumulatively, Australian households are annually disposing of 2,000 kg of waste to landfill.
HPAG has an additional benefit as compared to electrolysis hydrogen. The direct carbon capture and manufacturing of largely biogenic carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide and hydrogen is able to be manufactured to produce green methanol as an intermediary, very highly efficient hydrogen carrier. Consider that it would take 12 road tankers of compressed hydrogen gas to transport similar hydrogen energy as one tanker of green methanol. Ideal for such as a large country as Australia.
Hydrogen is also capable to be manufactured from waste.
Technology using thermo-chemical processes that separate the molecules in waste can also be used to manufacture hydrogen molecules from that contained within our landfill waste.
Our typical food and garden organics (FOGO) waste contains around 13% hydrogen molecules. A tad more than just water itself.
Overall, Australian landfill waste contains between 10% and 11% hydrogen molecules. Very similar in concentration to that of just the water itself.
Remembering it takes 50 solar panels and over 4,000 kg of water to produce 200 kg of hydrogen by electrolysis.
Using waste to hydrogen technology 2,000 kg of household waste is capable to produce the same 200 kg of hydrogen, requiring 8 solar panels of renewable power.
80% of all trucks fuelled using hydrogen from our landfill waste.
Annually the average waste to landfill per Australian household is 2,000 kg of “non-recyclable” waste. 930kg from our homes and 1,070 kg from our businesses. 2,000 kg of landfill waste emits around 3,140 kg CO2e annually.
That 2,000 kg of landfill waste, as a recyclable hydrogen molecule resource, can be used to manufacture around 200 kg of hydrogen.
200 kg of hydrogen is enough to fuel a hydrogen fuel cell Light Commercial Vehicle to travel around 10,000 km. In total Australians dispose of enough waste to landfill to recharge or refuel 80% of a zero emissions Australian bus, truck, and vehicle fleet.
The energy efficiency of waste to hydrogen to fuel electric vehicles is estimated at 150%, roughly nine times greater than electrolysis hydrogen and double that of grid provided renewable power. The bonus with waste to hydrogen being that the carbon savings are also significantly improved.
An integrated network of hydrogen manufacturing across urban and regional Australia, creating jobs and actioning steps to net zero. This domestically produced hydrogen from waste replaces an estimated 12 billion litres of ever-increasing expensive diesel.
Average GHG abatement cost per car over $2,500 per t CO2e.
The average passenger car is estimated to travel 12,600 km per year.
A household’s new electric car, fully recharged with renewable energy, would abate around 3 ton of greenhouse gases per year.
For an average $75,000 electric car investment over its 8 to 10-year life, it represents a cost per ton of greenhouse gas reduced of $2,500 to $3,333. This outcome is on the basis the car has been fully recharged at home using 100% solar renewable power.
In 2023, the Australian Productivity Commission estimated that the marginal cost of abatement of government subsidies to stimulate the purchase of electric cars in Australia was a cost between $987 and $20,084 per t CO2e.
GHG abatement cost per heavy vehicle below $2,200 / t CO2e.
Australian businesses’ medium and heavy regional and urban trucks and buses are estimated to travel a minimum of 78,000 km per year. On average each vehicle emitting between 40 and up to 140 t CO2e per year.
Refuelling or recharging a regional heavy vehicle with electrolysis hydrogen reduces those per vehicle emissions to between 8 and 29 t CO2e annually.
A Sub.Zero hydrogen from waste eco-system targets to abate up to 287 t CO2e for long haul heavy vehicles and an average of 81 t CO2e for other urban driven light and heavy vehicles annually. On average, this reduces the cost per ton of greenhouse gas abated to between $1,710 and $2,200 per t CO2e.
A marginal cost well below the similar outcome from an electric passenger car.
Encouraging local councils to transition to Climate Positive
Australian local councils’ direct greenhouse gas emissions are typically sourced from landfill waste, grid energy, transport, and construction projects. Local councils’ indirect emissions are dependant on the value chain procurement drivers it has in place for purchases within its network.
Climate positive outcomes are attainable by local councils that progress with wholly or partially owned hydrogen from waste facilities.
Manufacturing waste into a valuable resource, local councils are able to self-source Sub.Zero resources manufactured locally to abate its’ own greenhouse gases, selling excess Sub.Zero resources to local road transport and other businesses to extend the greenhouse gas reduction benefits.
Regenerating resources to live locally.
Rethink Zero.
Less than 30% of Australian households have solar. Many have excess solar energy that is being sold into grid network at less than $0.05 per kWh, whilst paying more than $0.30 per kWh.
Hydrogen from waste facilities require renewable power which is best sourced locally.
Rethink Zero. encourages local councils in establishing hydrogen from waste facilities to promote retail energy Closing the Loop plans with its residents. The plans to buy households excess household solar power at higher than current rates that incentive higher solar use at home.
Reduced transmission losses from locally provided power are estimated to improve overall efficiency of waste to hydrogen to wheel by 8% to 158%.
Boosting the Rewiring Australia model, this pathway provides those residents participating in the plan with higher returns to lower their overall household running costs. Using local infrastructure reduces the biodiversity impacts, energy losses, and costs of constructing renewable energy facilities at long distances.
Local councils lower rates or provide enhanced infrastructure
Local councils transitioning to hydrogen from waste facilities, transform non-recyclable waste to valuable resources capable to be used locally.
Recent studies demonstrate that regenerating landfill waste to hydrogen nearly doubles the value current attainable from current recyclable programs.
in addition to supplying hydrogen to decarbonise Australia’s road freight transport, councils could consider pathways to enhance circular economy benefits for its residents. This could include:
rebates or discounts for local businesses, particularly restaurants, food retail and agriculture, with food and organic waste to participate in waste to hydrogen supply and off-takes;
participating local residents that use Sub.Zero powered public transport;
local businesses encouraged to purchase Sub.Zero power or hydrogen for their own use stationary or vehicle uses.
Zero Waste | Sub.Zero Hydrogen | Climate Positive Councils
Waste to Hydrogen to X
Capturing the hydrogen value from waste, with less renewable energy, less land usage, and greater carbon abatement benefits than known alternative technologies including landfill capture, incineration, electrolysis hydrogen, and composting.
