The Hunter is no stranger to the phrase 'clean energy'. As the region's business leaders look to a future away from mining, there is one company leading the charge in clean energy innovation from a facility in Tomago.
Last year startup MGA Thermal launched the world's first commercial electro-thermal energy storage system. This year the Australian Renewable Energy Agency provided a boost of up to $3.25 million in funding to the Tomago-based company.
Not bad for a product that looks a bit like a plain brick, but is actually a highly effective energy storage unit.
And in the business' most recent move following its $17 million capital raise, Greg Fyffe, former head of sales, energy solutions at Shell Energy Australia, has been appointed as the first chief commercial officer.
The Newcastle Herald caught up with Mr Fyffe to find out more about MGA Thermal:
What is the main goal of 'cleantech' and your company MGA Thermal?
"Cleantech at its best solves real problems at commercial scale by addressing the heat trilemma: decarbonisation, cost-competitiveness and energy security. For MGA Thermal, the goal is straightforward: give heavy industry a bankable pathway to decouple from fossil fuels."
Do you see yourselves as pioneers in this space and in the changing landscape of the Hunter energy sector?
"The Hunter has always been an energy region; it just looks different now than it did 30 years ago. What MGA Thermal represents is proof that the next chapter of that energy story can be written here, by Australian technology, built and manufactured locally.
We've developed an electro-thermal energy storage system that has completed a successful year of demonstration-scale operation and is now moving into industrial deployment through a 200-MWh FEED study at Tronox, in partnership with Australian energy company Knode. The project's pre-feasibility study confirmed price parity with fossil-fuelled heat on a levelised cost-of-heat basis. That's not a small thing. Until you can compete on cost, you can't compete at all.
The Hunter is producing world-leading deep tech, and I think that deserves more recognition than it gets."
What initially got you personally interested in this field of work?
"Climate change is the defining challenge of our time, and I reached a point in my career where I wanted to be working directly on scalable, enterprise-level solutions with global impact. I spent the first half of my career in oil and gas, which gave me a deep understanding of how energy-intensive industries operate.
About five years ago, I made a conscious decision to transition into climate tech."
What is your focus today? And what will it look like in five years' time?
"Right now, I'm in conversations with Australian food and beverage manufacturers, mineral processors, chemical producers and paper mills - facilities that run 24/7 on gas-fired steam and are facing volatile fuel costs, rising emissions pressure, and real energy security concerns. My job is to give them a credible path to decouple from fossil fuels.
In five years, I expect those same facilities will be generating high-grade steam from MGA Blocks charged by cheap, plentiful renewable electricity. We start in Australia, but this technology addresses a global market."
What would you say to people looking at entering the energy industry?
"The energy transition is the biggest economic and industrial shift of our lifetime. If you're a young engineer, scientist, or business thinker looking for a career with genuine impact and genuine scale, this is the sector to be in. The problems are hard, the solutions are needed urgently, and the companies solving them are growing fast. Study science or engineering if you can, but don't underestimate the value of commercial and business skills either. Turning net-zero targets into bankable, commercial realities requires people who can build breakthrough technology and those who know how to deploy it at scale."
One thing worth adding: "the scale of the opportunity here is often underestimated. Industrial decarbonisation is a $100 billion-plus global market that renewables have largely failed to touch until now.
MGA Thermal is one of a very small number of companies in the world with a commercially viable solution ready to displace industrial process heat related fossil fuels at scale. The fact that it was invented in Newcastle, is manufactured in Tomago, and is now being deployed at industrial scale in Western Australia is something the region should be proud of - and something the rest of the world is starting to pay attention to."
