CANBERRA, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from Australian National University (ANU) will lead a national program to reduce emissions from heavy-polluting industries.

The federal government has recently announced 39 million Australian dollars (29.3 million U.S. dollars) in funding for ANU's Heavy Industry Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre over the next 10 years.

It will fund research into new ways to make steel and aluminium using carbon-neutral technologies.

Heavy industries account for approximately 20 percent of Australia's carbon dioxide emissions.

"We're looking at processes for making green steel using renewable energy like solar and wind, which if implemented could eliminate up to 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions," John Pye from ANU's College of Engineering and Computer Science told The Canberra Times, which published the story on Saturday.

He said that the research team would work with industry partners to investigate how hydrogen can be used to produce materials.

"Australia is a big exporter of iron ore, so as this program goes forward we'll partner with big tech companies to see how we can work together," Pye said.

"We'll be able to do modelling and calculations to see what a large-scale hydrogen supply looks like."