12:00a.m. 4th December 2008

| By Bill Hoffman

Way of the future: Colin Salmond has invented a hydrogen fuel cell that will allow trawler operators to cut their fuel bill to zero. Photo: Jason Dougherty / 178936

The Sunshine Coast could be the site of Australia’s first hydrogen community if the council, university, industry and the community fully embrace the concept of developing a national model for sustainability here.

Describing the project as “executable yesterday’’, inventor Colin Salmond said the emission-free technology relied on our only truly sustainable resources – the sun, wind and hydrogen.

Environment portfolio chair Keryn Jones said the proposal deserved consideration either by council’s renewable-energy taskforce or by a separate steering committee early in the new year.

Mr Salmond said northern hemisphere academics who had been working in the field for 24 years wanted to collaborate with Australian universities, and manufacturers had expressed an interest in making components here.

Queenslanders were warned yesterday to expect a 14% hike in the cost of electricity by July next year, with Nationals senate leader Ron Boswell saying that even more draconian rises could be expected under the federal government’s proposed Emission Trading Scheme.

“Queenslanders have had three increases in the maximum charge price for electricity since the industry was deregulated, but these increases, large as they are, will be insignificant compared to the electricity cost increases expected under the Rudd government’s proposed ETS,” Senator Boswell said.

“Treasury modelling predicts that, under a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme minus five (per cent) scenario, the average wholesale electricity price will increase by 66% in Queensland between the years 2010 and 2015.”

Those wholesale cost increases would translate to an average household electricity price increase of 21% in 2010 under the lowest target ETS (CPRS -5%) and a 44% price increase in 2013 under the Garnaut -25% scenario, Senator Boswell said.

Mr Salmond said a hydrogen village in the Lolland Islands of Denmark, which used renewable wind turbine energy to split water to produce hydrogen, had zero CO2 emissions and was already connected to three homes. Another 35 would be connected to the system, which uses hydrogen fuel cells, by the end of next year at a cost per home of only $9000.

Mr Salmond’s company, ElectryGen Pty Ltd, has already been commissioned to fit a Cairns-based trawler with wind turbine, solar, hydrogen regeneration, a project that will not only earn its owners carbon credits but also leave them with a zero fuel bill.