Salt deposit older than dinosaurs may shape Australia’s energy future

The article discusses the potential of the Adavale Basin, an ancient and largely unexplored geological formation beneath outback Queensland, Australia, as a massive clean energy storage site. This basin contains the Boree Salt deposit, a thick layer of rock salt suitable for creating underground caverns by dissolving the salt with water. These caverns could store hydrogen gas produced from renewable electricity, addressing a key challenge in Australia’s energy transition: the intermittent nature of solar and wind power. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which are costly and limited in scale, salt caverns could store energy at a geological scale, enabling storage for days and at volumes sufficient to support millions of homes. Geoscience Australia recently completed a $31 million drilling campaign to explore the basin’s potential, including setting a depth record by drilling three kilometers underground and extracting extensive rock and groundwater samples. The concept of storing hydrogen in salt caverns is well established internationally, with existing large-scale facilities in countries like the United States. A single cavern in the