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As the world looks to decarbonise, more "green" energy and processes are being touted as the key to reducing emissions.
Green hydrogen has been in the spotlight lately, but could green iron be next big thing?
Green iron is made with renewable energy sources that do not release carbon dioxide, instead releasing water, making it as decarbonised as possible.
This week, international company Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners announced its plans to build a green iron facility in Gladstone, central Queensland, and mine ore from a titanium magnetite deposit nearby.
Industrial decarbonisation lead within CSIRO's Towards Net Zero mission, Warren Flentje, said this project would be world-leading and one of the first of its kind in Queensland.
So is green iron the way to go for reducing emissions and decarbonising the steelmaking process?
How does it work?
According to University of Newcastle senior chemical engineer Jessica Allen, traditional iron production uses a blast furnace, where iron ore and coal are combined to create the iron, and resulting in the production of carbon dioxide.
But the green iron process uses hydrogen instead of coal, combining iron ore with hydrogen gas.
"Instead of making carbon dioxide, like when you're using coal, you make the iron and you make water. So that's a decarbonised approach," she said.
It will also use renewable energy as a resource to power the production process.
The final product can then be exported as pellets, otherwise known as briquettes, to steel mills across the globe.
This is instead of using a traditional blast furnace which would melt the iron and send it to an integrated furnace as hot metal to be made into steel.
Once the green iron has been manufactured it can be exported elsewhere to continue the steelmaking process.
The final green iron product does not differ from iron created from coal.
Is this the future of iron production in Australia?
Dr Allen said she hoped the Gladstone facility was a step towards the phase-out of fossil fuels in Queensland and Australia needed to leverage its advantages.
"We've already got the iron ore here and we've got huge amounts of renewable electricity that we can generate at quite low cost," she said.
CSIRO's Mr Flentje said green iron projects reaped financial benefits.
"Projects such as this are really valuable for the development of regional communities," he said.
"The kinds of riches that will flow from projects like this really flow to workers in regional areas."
He said they created demand for highly skilled gas fitters and iron makers.
Mr Flentje said hydrogen-based iron making was a concept that had been in development since about 2004 but had never been successfully done on a commercial scale.
"We know that it's feasible and we've seen projects emerging around the world, particularly in Sweden," he said.
He said that the Gladstone project was likely to be at a grander scale than what was seen in other parts of the world.
According to the Australian Steel Institute, Australia produces about 5.3 million tonnes of steel annually.
What are the downsides?
Dr Allen said the production of green iron required a lot of energy so there would need to be a focus on renewable projects.
She said another challenge was that the iron ore needed to be highly purified before iron production could start because it took a lot more energy to heat it up to reaction temperature.
"You want to make sure it is just iron oxide and not all the other stuff you dig up out of the ground," Dr Allen said.
Quinbrook Infrastructure has secured an agreement with Central Queensland Metals to explore and mine from a vanadiferous titanomagnetite ore deposit at Eulogie, about 70 kilometres west of Gladstone, to use in production.
"Magnetite are the ones that you can magnetically separate, so you can purify them and get quite a high ion concentration, whereas the other types of ores are a little harder to get more concentrated," Dr Allen said.
Quinbrook will sponsor the evaluation and testing of the ore deposit.
Mr Flentje said for these kinds of projects to be economically viable the cost of green hydrogen needed to come down.
He said at the moment hydrogen was about $5 a kilogram. When it got to $2 per kg these projects would be economically viable.
How will it be funded?
The facility is being backed by $3.5 billion of private investment from Australia and overseas.
The proposal comes a week after federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced a $13.7 billion funding package in the budget for production tax incentives for green hydrogen and processed critical minerals.
This means hydrogen producers will get a $2 tax credit for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, paid to them as a cash refund if it exceeds their total tax bill.
What is the timeline?
Quinbrook Infrastructure's Australian managing director Brian Restall said the development and design stage, which was now underway, would take two to three years.
Construction is expected to take three to four years, which means the facility would not be operational until at least the late 2020s.
Mr Restall said the company had secured land for the facility in Gladstone and had lodged a development application for a solar farm at nearby Miriam Vale.
The company plans to use the hydrogen generated from Stanwell's Central Queensland Hydrogen Project.
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