👉 Background: As part of a shift to clean energy, the Treasurer has announced some big investments in renewable energy... And some big whacks for non-renewable energy.

👉 What happened: The government will change will be able to extract an additional $2.4 billion from carbon-emitting oil and gas companies. On the other hand, it’s investing $2 billion into a hydrogen program called Hydrogen Headstart.

👉 What else: The government is also investing $4 billion into “realising our future as a renewable energy superpower”. It's not really clear where that money will be spent - but it's definitely towards clean energy.

What's the key learning?

💡Move over space race, the next big international race is all around hydrogen. So far, wind and solar power has proven that it can supply electricity for homes and electric-car batteries, but there hasn’t been a real alternative to reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing industry.

💡Hydrogen is the great green hope: The idea would be to replace coal with green hydrogen. And rather than emitting carbon dioxide from coal, you’d be producing just water vapour from hydrogen.

💡Governments around the world believe hydrogen could become the key to driving industrial growth... So much so that the US announced $7 billion USD in funding for the hydrogen economy. Now, Australia is playing catch up.