Australia must hone its green-metals edge, or risk losing it, says expert

Australia can't afford to miss its green metals opportunity, says a UNSW expert speaking at COP30 in Brazil. 

Australia has an early advantage in the race for green metals – but the nation’s real opportunity lies not in what it digs up, says UNSW’s Dr Rahman Daiyan, but in what it can transform. 

Speaking at the Green Metals Forum during COP30 in Brazil, Dr Daiyan said Australia must move beyond its traditional mine-and-ship model and invest in downstream processing and low-carbon supply chain design. 

The challenge, he said, wasn’t just technical and economic – it was cultural, industrial, and geopolitical. 

Dr Daiyan, from UNSW’s School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, has expertise in technologies that convert renewable electricity into other energy carriers – including hydrogen, renewable ammonia, low-carbon liquid fuel and mineral processing – as well as how policy can support the scale-up of clean fuels and green industrialisation. 

He is also involved in a series of international projects to redesign global energy and green-metal supply chains. This includes an Australia-German green iron supply chain project – a partnership highlighted by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen at the opening of the COP30 discussion. 

Dr Daiyan said the initiative “was less about the supply chain numbers” and more about “a dialogue – about what Europe needs, and what Australia can provide”. 

That dialogue, he said, had recently taken on greater urgency. 

Europe’s push for carbon neutrality by mid-century had collided with its energy constraints. 

That had opened the door to partnerships with countries such as Australia – rich in minerals, sunshine and space for solar, and technical know-how, he said. 

Three waves of green partnership 

Dr Daiyan said Europe’s green transformation had unfolded in three waves. 

During the first phase, he said, European nations realised they couldn’t produce all the clean energy they needed at home. Instead, they would have to import fuels made from excess renewable electricity. 

“If they wanted to meet that demand themselves, they would have to increase their renewable grid by at least double by 2050, and that’s where countries such as Australia came in.” 

The second wave, he said, was driven by politics. 

“Europe is now communicating: we need to do this fast, but we also want to make sure our sovereign capabilities are retained.” 

Then came the third, “green metal wave”. 

“A lot of the European companies which were initially thinking of having their own green iron production … realised it’s probably not going to happen.” 

Hydrogen, the fuel used to decarbonise steel, was expensive to ship. Iron – already processed using hydrogen – was not. That trade-off, Dr Daiyan explained, sits at the centre of a new approach. 

“Taking green iron from Australia can potentially save you 263 petajoules of hydrogen import and 20 terawatt-hours of electricity annually,” he said. “That energy can be used for what Europe does with specialty steel, to make their wind turbines and other advanced manufacturing where Europe enjoys competitive advantage. 

“It allows us to have a bit of value addition for Australia. So, in that sense, it’s a win-win partnership.” 

Following the panel, Dr Daiyan noted challenges with this approach. Over the past five years, the team has engaged with industry, academia, civil society, and political groups over concerns about shifts in Germany’s manufacturing base – the foundation of its industrial strength. 

“What we tried communicating in our work, in our partnership, is that this global supply chain enables Germany to continue doing what they are good at, the specialty steel sector, the advanced manufacturing, while at the same time allowing Australia to also value-add.” 

The modelling indicates that Australian green iron could be delivered to Europe at a lower cost than domestically produced green iron using imported hydrogen, while reducing pressure on Europe’s constrained renewable and hydrogen capacity. 

Australia, he said, could use its renewable energy advantage – vast solar and wind potential across the continent – to produce green iron more cheaply and export it to Europe and Asia, embedding itself in the global low-carbon supply chain. 

“It’s not that we are [only] bottling up our sunshine and wind in the form of green metals,” Dr Daiyan said. “It’s also about the technology integration – the universities coming in. There are a number of startups in Australia developing this sort of technology as well.” 

Global integration for good 

Successful collaborations between industry and government, he said, had produced a template for this kind of technology sharing. 

One outcome of the previous Australia-Germany hydrogen supply chain project – supported by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Department of Industry, Science and Resources and Germany’s government-owned development agency – was an initiative called HyGATE. 

Funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and German partner PtJ, HyGATE links early-stage Australian and German clean-energy technologies – what he called “low technological readiness level” or low-TRL innovations – into a shared hydrogen supply chain. 

“It’s important to understand that we don’t have strength in certain aspects in Australia. 

“We can develop catalysts which we mine in Australia – low-cost minerals – but we’re not very good at scaling up. We found out the Germans were excellent at scaling up.” 

He said the same approach – also used in partnerships with China – offered a model for international industrial strategy, one that mirrored the global rise of solar technology. 

“Arguably, Australia’s greatest contribution to global decarbonisation was [solar] technology developed at UNSW and then massively scaled in China. It brought down the cost of solar cells by 90% over the last 10 years. 

“The next generation [of technology] that we’re looking into … can reduce that cost of hydrogen, reduce that cost of green iron production, improve on that electrolysis pathway for iron making, and at the same time make all these systems with material that you’re effectively mining in Australia.” 

He said that, globally, industrial nations looking for rapid, cost-effective decarbonisation were increasingly turning to green iron as a bridge – a way to clean up manufacturing without overhauling entire energy systems. 

However, turning that ambition into reality would depend on investment and political infrastructure. 

Australia’s research goldmine 

Dani Alexander, CEO of the UNSW Energy Institute – which helps connect industry and government with clean tech solutions – said the depth and breadth of Australian research offered an unparalleled opportunity to lead the global green transition. 

“If you look at the work that someone like Dr Rahman Daiyan is involved in, it’s remarkable,” Ms Alexander said. “He’s scaling up renewable jet fuel production using waste CO₂ and green hydrogen, contributing to an $8.2 million program to commercialise hydrogen-low-carbon liquid ammonia technologies for export, and helping design systems that convert captured CO₂ into high-value catalysts – turning carbon waste into fuels and chemicals.” 

Dr Daiyan is also developing an open-source modelling tools that let governments and industry assess the costs, emissions, and feasibility of emerging green-metal value chains, such as green iron and steel – building a more transparent, data-driven foundation for investment and policy.

For media enquiries and to arrange interviews, please contact: Elva Darnell 

Tel: +61 431 601 216 
Email: [email protected] 

Images

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Australia's Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, with UNSW's Dr Rahman Daiyan at COP30. Photo: Changlong Wang, Monash University

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