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.
Australia can 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.
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.
"A lot of people know UNSW - that's where the PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell, a type of high-efficiency solar cell technology) solar cells were invented," he said.
"Arguably, Australia's greatest contribution to global decarbonisation was the 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 has begun groundwork. At COP30, the country signed the Belém Declaration on Global Green Industrialisation , pledging to embed low-carbon manufacturing in its national economic strategy.
Australia had already committed to expand local processing under its Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030 .
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Canberra announced a $2 billion package to help aluminium smelters transition to renewable power by 2036. And in October, Australia and the US signed a $4.6 billion agreeme nt to strengthen critical minerals processing and reduce reliance on China.
Industry insights
Fellow panellist Richard Carcenac, Head of Green Metal Technology at Australian mining company Fortescue, noted the urgency of scaling green steel capabilities.
"The transition to green iron and steel isn't optional - it's an imperative," he said. "The steel industry is one of the biggest polluters in the world, so we clearly have to clean that up.
"From an Australian perspective, it's essential we keep our iron ores relevant in a decarbonised world."
Fortescue, the world's fourth-largest iron ore producer, is constructing a demonstration plant - which Mr Carcenac called their "Mythbusters Project" - to prove that Australia's low- to mid-grade iron ore can be converted into high-purity green iron.
The company expects to begin supplying the steel industry with its first output next year.
The next phase will focus on scaling up and attracting partners - government, energy, finance, and foreign investment - to support large-scale deployment.
"There's a high-confidence pathway forward," Mr Carcenac said. "The world is waking up to this."
Fortescue, he said, had also worked with a Chinese university to model an accelerated decarbonisation plan for China's steelmaking.
"The emerging findings are fascinating … by accelerating their decarbonisation by 10 years by importing 100 million tons of green iron from a country like Australia, China could eliminate 1.7 billion tons of CO₂ by 2060," Mr Carcenac said.
"That has a carbon value of nearly 2.5 trillion renminbi … it doesn't matter what currency you're talking about, it's a lot of money."
Or around $542 billion, in Australian currency.
"If you can find your niche in the green metal ecosystem, there's unlimited opportunity," he said.
Australia's research goldmine
Another panellist, the Superpower Institute's Joanna Kay, agreed the economic stakes were enormous - and Australia's universities gave it an edge.
"We've got so much talent … There's so much happening within our research institutes that will catapult the technology we need to make these industries go forward, and go forward very quickly."
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.
