High-tech hydrogen plan for Taminda industrial site held up by Tamworth Regional Council zoning

There's just one holdup: Tamworth council won't rezone a site right next Taminda to permit the hydrogen industrial development.

That's according to energy developer Rohan Boehm, who claims to have received interest from five major companies to invest in developing the new $100 million hydrogen project.

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The Chan Abbey farm's fields are just metres outside the existing Taminda industrial estate, which is its immediate neighbour.

Mr Boehm has already won approval to build the $8 million Taminda Solar Farm on the site. Construction is set to start in the new year, and be completed within six months.

But he has far bigger dreams for the site.

"If you have distributed energy that's made here and used here, the benefits stay here..." he said.

"I want energy to transform the city, and it can be done."

There's just one holdup, he said: they need the Tamworth Regional Council to rezone the nine hectare site for industrial development.

Mr Boehm said the site's ability to get energy from behind the metre, its access to the city's intermodal freight hub - rail lines run right across the road - and its proximity to the airport, make it ideal to be the state's first hydrogen manufacturing hub.

"Industrial land that is powered by its own solar farm has a massive competitive advantage," he said.

"A city and a region then that has renewable energy at the core of its new industrial development, that's how the new competitive advantage is created."

Mr Boehm said his $100 million scheme would create something in the order of 300 or 400 jobs.

In the long run, the area could be the centre of bio-energy, converting waste generated from the city's large chicken industry into power.

The area would have sufficient energy, for instance, to generate enough hydrogen to run every single train in NSW on hydrogen fuel, he said.

"Tamworth city has persistently ignored this particular piece of land, which part of it is earmarked for industrial zoning," he said.

"It's earmarked, it's on the LEP.

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"There's been council after council that has continued to refuse to allow this to occur, but allowed many other even less noble places to go through."

The industrial estate would be about nine hectares, with the remainder of the site earmarked for solar 'agrivoltaic' generation while still accommodating grazing by smaller animals up to the size of a sheep.

The trick is to be quick, he said.

"Other cities will get there quickly."

A spokesperson for Tamworth Regional Council said that a previous rezoning for the site, which went to council in August 2021, did not proceed.

"The owner of the land is able to lodge another application should they wish for council to consider rezoning the land in question. This would go before the new council in the new year," she said.

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