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Wednesday 8 January 2025
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Food relief boost to peninsula charities
TRACEY Trueman, Val Jarman, Pauline Porcaro and Lynne McKenzie from Dromana Community House. Picture: Gary Sissons
TWO southern peninsula organisations dedicated to alleviating food insecurity have been awarded state government grants to enhance their efforts in helping those in need. Rye Community House received $18,000, which will help build a custom outside food-safe cupboard and buy a portable fridge and freezer, while Dromana Community House has been given $31,650, which will go towards expanding its food relief with the establishment of a Dromana Community Pod. The community pod will be at the Dromana Recreation Reserve Sporting Pavilion and in portable buildings to be provided by the shire. The funds will also allow the
house to establish a Community Pod Café providing free coffee and snacks, as well as a community pod share and training kitchen, and a seed pod kitchen garden. “Providing free lunch from the Community Pod Cafe and an opportunity to connect over a coffee for a chat and catchup and an opportunity for those using the service to pitch in will add value to the community capacity,” Dromana Community House manager Tracey Trueman said. Eastern Victoria MP Tom McIntosh announced the grants on 20 December as part of the government’s community food relief program, which is helping respond to the rising demand for food relief amid cost-of-living pressures.
Hastings hydrogen project in doubt Cameron McCullough cameron@mpnews.com.au PLANS to export hydrogen from Western Port to Japan are in doubt, after the lead company in the venture, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, issued conflicting reports about its viability and their intention to proceed. The project was seen as an essential part of the hydrogen energy supply chain (HESC) that would see the manufacturing of hydrogen from brown coal in the Latrobe Valley, before being liquefied at Hastings and shipped to Japan to provide what proponents call “green energy” in that country. The brown coal-to-hydrogen
project’s commercial partners, led by Kawasaki, have been backed by the federal and state governments, who each provided $50m towards the pilot project, with another $2.35b reportedly offered by the Japanese government towards the commercial project, should it proceed. The project has been controversial from the start, with former Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne effectively bypassing Mornington Peninsula Shire’s planning authority by fast-tracking approval in 2019. The Mornington Peninsula Shire mayor at the time, Cr Bryan Payne, said news of the government’s takeover of planning powers for the hydrogen project “sadly reflects on the
state of planning in Victoria and raises issues of where public health and safety responsibility fits with government at both the federal and state level” (Hydrogen plant to get all clear, The News 6/11/18). Environmentally, opponents argue the HESC project is just another inappropriate development in ecologically delicate Western Port, with an estimated 3.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide and other noxious gases produced each year from the production process. The HESC project partners have said they will use carbon capture and storage technology to pump those gasses deep underground in the Gippsland Basin; a process opponents say has never succeeded anywhere globally despite
billions being spent in developing the technology. It’s argued that while the project would enable Japan to cut it’s CO2 emissions, it would lift Victoria’s emissions, raising doubts whether the state will meet its emissions target reductions of 75-80 per cent by 2035; net zero by 2045 (MPs under pressure over hydrogen, The News 14/11/23). But delays and setbacks in the project have seen it falter. Pressure in Australia against the project has remained high, and the safety of the project was questioned after a fire aboard the purpose-built hydrogen tanker, Suiso Frontier, while moored in Western Port in 2022 (Fire aboard hydrogen ship, The News 5/4/22).
Japanese media reported in mid-November that Kawasaki had “significantly revised its plans” to “establish an international supply chain to procure hydrogen from Australia” as it had become difficult to procure hydrogen in Australia within the deadline. The report by Japanese news outlet Nikkei stated “the company has changed hydrogen procurement to domestic” and it was “downsizing its hydrogen carriers and is steering towards a more ‘realistic solution’”. The apparent policy change by the global energy giant was a cause for celebration by environmental groups that had lobbied against the project for years. Continued Page 4