Long-time hydrogen proponent Japan is partnering with Australia to create a supply chain that will connect the Australian state of Victoria with the Japanese city of Kawasaki.

In a video message at the March 4th ministerial meeting of the Asia Zero Emission Community (ASEC is the English acronym), Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, “In Asia, we should have as many energy options as possible, and hydrogen and ammonia are options.”

With no oil and gas reserves to draw upon, Japan has been a stalwart of hydrogen power. Kishida said he wants to expand the supply networks by cooperation with countries in the region, creating a robust network in a part of the world prone to natural disasters.

Eleven nations participated in the ASRC meeting in Tokyo, with participants agreeing to promote investments in infrastructure for decarbonisation.

In addition to being one of the world’s largest economic growth centres, Southeast Asia is currently one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, accounting for a third of GGH emissions while accounting for around 60 percent of global coal use.

In the agreement a number of Japanese companies, including KHI and Itawani Corp, under the HESC project, Electric Power Development (J-Power) and Sumitomo Corp will produce hydrogen through coal gasification using CCUS from a brown coal mine in Gippsland, Victoria.

KHI and Iwatani will oversee the liquefaction, loading, transportation and unloading of hydrogen in Japan.

J-Power and Sumitomo initially plan to produce 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes per annum of gaseous clean hydrogen.

The joint venture recently announced that it had entered its commercial demonstration phase with the Japanese government funding of 220B yen ($1.6B).