Australia has every reason to be confident about hydrogen. Abundant access to natural resources need for renewable energy, lots of land and proximity to hydrogen-hungry markets in Japan and South Korea and in some respect a strong government backing through a National Hydrogen Strategy that frames the country as a future global supplier. On paper, the foundations look solid.
But 2025 delivered a sharp reality check. The AUD 14 billion Central Queensland Hydrogen Project was cancelled after Stanwell withdrew its support, following the earlier exits of Kansai Electric Power and Iwatani Corporation. Fortescue Future Industries considerable scaling back its hydrogen ventures to focus on prioritising decarbonisation of its own mining operations,These were not fringe projects; they were flagship developments that anchored Australia's hydrogen narrative for years and hence influenced the media and public narrative around Hydrogen.
This was not helped in the 2026 budget, when in answer to global geopolitics and need to focus on Australia energy security the Round 2 of Hydrogen Headstart fund was reduced from AUD 2 billion to A$1 billion. Drawing further attention to one of the region’s biggest draw backs funding stability and certainty.
The lesson is not that Australian hydrogen is failing. It is that ambition, investment intent and favourable geography are necessary but not sufficient. What separates projects that progress from those that collapse is the presence, or absence, of stable long-term funding, robust assurance infrastructure underpinning every stage of delivery.
The Credibility Gap Investors Are Watching
When working with hydrogen project developers and offtake partners across the Asia-Pacific region, buyers, particularly in Japan, Germany, and South Korea, are asking increasingly specific questions about verification. Key questions include, what is the carbon intensity fo the Hydrogenhow will its emissions intensity be independently measured, and what chain-of-custody documentation will exist from electrolyser to export terminal.
With many of the global schemes not having a common agreement on what makes Hydrogen “green” (thresholds), a common way of identifying boundaries and common language (green, low carbon, clean, etc) further expands the credibility gap.
These are not bureaucratic hurdles. They are the conditions under which long-term offtake agreements get signed and project finance gets committed. During a Guarantee of Origin verification engagement with a hydrogen producer in the Asia-Pacific region, the process of establishing a credible, auditable emissions methodology
What "Investment-Grade" Hydrogen Actually Requires
Australia's Guarantee of Origin (GO) scheme, now operational and designed to verify the emissions intensity of hydrogen production, is a significant step in the right direction. It creates the traceability framework that export markets are demanding. But a scheme existing and a project being genuinely GO-ready are two different things.
Investment-grade hydrogen requires assurance to be built into the project design, not retrofitted at the point of certification. This means metering strategies that are independent and tamper-evident, energy accounting that accounts for parasitic loads and curtailment, fuel quality testing aligned to ISO 14687 at each point of custody transfer, and safety cases for novel infrastructure such as high-pressure storage and ammonia cracking, where the engineering precedent is still being established.
LRQA's involvement in hydrogen standards development, including through ISO TC WG 27 and 33 on fuel quality and participation in Standards Australia's working group, reflects exactly this challenge. Standards do not move as fast as project timelines. Developers who wait for final standards before building their assurance frameworks will always be behind.
The Projects That Are Moving and Why
Not everything in Australian hydrogen stalled. In July 2025, the Australian Government committed up to AUD 432 million to Orica's Hunter Valley Hydrogen Hub, a project with a clearly defined industrial offtake, a credible production scale of up to 12 tonnes of green hydrogen per day, and a direct integration with existing ammonia and explosives manufacturing infrastructure. ARENA also committed funding to the Murchison Green Hydrogen Project in Western Australia, backed by a 1,500 MW electrolysis vision and port infrastructure suited for export.
What these projects have in common is: defined customers, defined uses, and defined verification pathways. The projects that collapsed were, in many cases, still in search of an offtake market when costs and timelines shifted. Assurance cannot manufacture a business case, but it can be the difference between a project that can demonstrate its value to a cautious financier and one that cannot.
Where Assurance Adds Value Right Now
For Australian hydrogen developers navigating this environment, there are three areas where rigorous assurance has an immediate, practical return:
- Guarantee of Origin readiness: Engaging with GO verification requirements before first production, not at the certification stage, ensures metering, documentation, and reporting systems are audit-ready from day one and meet all the schemes possible to widen the offtake potential. Projects that treat this as a late-stage compliance exercise consistently find themselves rebuilding data infrastructure under time pressure.
- Fuel quality and safety case assurance: Hydrogen for export, transport, or industrial use must meet specific purity thresholds. Independent fuel quality verification at custody transfer points, aligned to ISO 14687, is increasingly a contractual requirement in offtake agreements, not an optional extra. Equally, safety cases for novel hydrogen infrastructure need independent technical review, not just internal sign-off.
- Supply chain and equipment inspection: Electrolysers, pressure vessels, and high-purity pipework in a ever evolving and supply chain continues to be a risk factor, especially as high import to Australia will be needed. Vendor qualification, design review and inspection, particularly for components procured from new or unproven global suppliers who need to meet Australian standards, reduces the risk of costly rework or safety incidents during commissioning. Confidence Is Earned, Not Assumed
Australia's hydrogen sector is in a consolidation phase. The projects that survive and attract capital will be those that can demonstrate verified performance, not just projected performance. In conversations with export market counterparts, the shift in tone over the past 18 months has been notable: early enthusiasm for Australian hydrogen has given way to sharper due diligence and more demanding verification requirements.
That is not a sign of lost confidence in Australia. It is a sign that the market is maturing. And in a maturing market, third-party assurance is not a cost to be minimised; it is the mechanism through which project confidence is built, maintained, and eventually rewarded with a signed offtake agreement.
Australia has the resources. It has the policy intent. What the next wave of projects needs is the assurance infrastructure to prove it.
