The push to lower emissions from Australia's mining industry is gaining momentum with trials of large-scale electric and hydrogen trucks now underway, and the race on to find the best solution.
Electrical engineer Clayton Franklin has had a foot in both camps.
He worked on a 220-tonne hydrogen battery hybrid mining truck for billionaire Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group.
But since 2021 when he formed his own company, Electric Power Conversions Australia, Mr Franklin has shifted into his own lane.
He spent five months and $2.5 million converting a 160-tonne Caterpillar 777, one of the most commonly used haul trucks in the Australian resources sector, from diesel to electric.
This month, as Fortescue's hydrogen-powered T 264 prototype truck arrived in the Pilbara for testing, Mr Clayton was pitching the benefits of his own electric truck to delegates at the Diggers and Dealers Mining Forum in Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
With the mining industry believed to contribute up to 3 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, Mr Franklin is adamant the transition away from diesel will not only lower emissions but costs as well.
He said the Caterpillar 777 truck used to guzzle 64 litres of diesel an hour.
"The mines have got to move to electric, not only just for saving the turtles and the environment, but for cost," Mr Franklin said.
"On one hand you have diesel, which costs $112 an hour, or do you want to go electric at $22 an hour?
"This truck burns through $650,000 to $700,000 worth of diesel a year. It's a huge amount of diesel burn."
That diesel burn was highlighted in a research paper earlier this year by Pranav Jaswani, a technology analyst at UK-based IDTechEx, who estimated 40–50 per cent of emissions produced by the global mining industry were from diesel engines.
He said the global haul truck population numbered about 55,000 and emitted 174 megatonnes of carbon dioxide annually — the equivalent of almost 38 million cars on the road.
"The electrification of haul trucks will be key to achieving meaningful emissions reductions in the industry and assisting mining companies to meet their sustainability objectives," Mr Jaswani said.
Like charging a Tesla
Mr Franklin's conversion of the diesel truck to electric saw more than 5.9 tonnes of components taken out and replaced with six batteries, each weighing 1.2 tonnes.
Overall, the truck is now 2.5 tonnes lighter, as the weight of the tray has been reduced.
Mr Franklin said charging the truck was straight-forward and took less than an hour.
"We use a standard CCS2 plug, and it's exactly the same as though it's charging your Tesla," he said.
Brad Higgins, from Austin Engineering, said the tray was custom-built to distribute the weight of the batteries.
He said it had not changed the payload capacity, which was still up to 100 tonnes, and the green paint job was designed to make the electric truck stand out on a mine site.
"When Clayton first came along and said this is what we're doing, we jumped at the chance, knowing that there's a step change needed in the mining industry," he said.
Mr Franklin said it was only a matter of time before the industry went fully electric.
"Why would a mine want dirty, diesel, expensive?" he said.
"They can go clean, green, cheaper — so they'll be out of business in 10 years if they don't go electric."
Hydrogen trial begins
In the Fortescue camp, the T 264 prototype, known as Europa, is being trialled at the Christmas Creek mine, near Nullagine, after making the 1100 kilometre journey from Perth.
It contains a 1.6-megawatt-hour battery and 500 kilowatts of fuel cells, and can store over 380 kilograms of liquid hydrogen.
The truck is refuelled with liquid hydrogen from a gaseous and liquid hydrogen plant at Fortescue's newly-minted Green Energy Hub at Christmas Creek.
"What do you think about my truck, mate?," Mr Forrest asked ABC News Breakfast earlier this month.
"That's the world's first green hydrogen truck, powered by the sun and wind of Australia, more energy than Putin could ever export."
The Pilbara trial began a month after Fortescue cut 700 jobs, which Mr Forrest said was not a sign he was pulling away from his green hydrogen ambitions.
"There's clearly going to be redundancies when you make something much more efficient," he said.
"Don't confuse that with the fact that we're growing our company rapidly, and we're growing it into green energy, growing it into green metal.
"We cannot keep going down the oil and gas path, just because we know it, because we're too lazy to do anything else."
