A Perth company says it can make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels and wants to build the machines to do it at Bell Bay.
PolarBlue announced the plan on Sunday, saying it would invest $1.5 billion over three years and create 150 jobs in the first phase.
The hub would use industrial 3D printing to make floating wind platforms.
Those platforms would be joined together into units the company calls harvesters, which would sail into windy waters and either send electricity back to the grid or use it to produce ammonia, methanol or hydrogen from seawater.
Founder Grant Reynolds told reporters Tasmania was chosen for its wind, deep-water port and shipping links, which he said would help cut costs and make cheaper energy possible.
He said it was “one of the few places in the world that can actually be done”.
Reynolds said PolarBlue would pack up its existing facility in Western Australia, ship it to Tasmania and recommission it at Bell Bay.
“The fastest we can probably have it online – and producing first facilities and production of harvesters – would be 18 months,” he said.
Reynolds said the company was working with the state on permits, with flag state registration for the vessels and general maritime approvals among the main hurdles still to clear.
He said the company did not expect any major problems and had designed around most of the potential issues.
Asked what the energy could be used for, Reynolds pointed to smelters, saying cheaper power could help restart mothballed operations and bring jobs back.
Liberty Bell Bay’s manganese smelter collapsed earlier this year, with more than 200 jobs lost. A separate power deal for Bell Bay Aluminium is yet to be settled.
Business, Industry and Resources Minister Felix Ellis said talks on that deal were continuing between Hydro Tasmania, Rio Tinto and the federal government, but he had no update.
Asked whether the state had provided any grants to the PolarBlue project, Ellis said it had not.
“This is purely a private investment,” he said.
Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone chief executive Susie Bower described the company as “a real disruptor in the energy market”.
“We welcome that to Tasmania as world-leading with the technology that this company is bringing and we can’t wait for them to get started,” she said.
The Australian Financial Review reported Grattan Institute senior fellow Tony Wood was reserving judgment on the project, citing “an absence of facts” about its economics.
The state government has signed a framework agreement with PolarBlue covering land, port access, training and marine access.
