Vikki Campion: Politicians believed Andrew Forrest’s hydrogen Fantasyland
Politicians from both sides of the fence believed Andrew Forrest when he sold them the idea that green hydrogen could power Australia and create tens of thousands of jobs. That premise has turned out to be a fantasy, writes Vikki Campion.
Opinion
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Not six months ago, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest addressed the Nationals party room in Canberra, urging members to ignore their constituents’ concerns about losing their land and listen to him.
Not three years ago, the billionaire miner quietly met senior cabinet ministers within the Coalition government and urged them to end the diesel rebate for heavy industry.
He had the solution: green hydrogen, powered by intermittent wind and solar.
He convinced some — not all — in the cabinet with his claims. He was investing $1bn into green hydrogen himself, and it was so simple: “All you need to do is run electricity through water.”
Publicly, he was posing with then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison in tradie yellow, promising that green hydrogen would make Australia $US12 trillion by 2050.
Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg would be the first to open taxpayers’ wallets and invest $300m in splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, using land-intensive, future-landfill wind and solar factories.
In speeches, Mr Frydenberg would use Fortescue Metals as an example of a company that, because of green hydrogen, would not just be around in 2050 but “bigger and stronger”.
One year and $300m to green hydrogen later, Mr Frydenberg was gone, and the International Energy Agency reported that less than 0.1 per cent of global hydrogen was green — and what was had come from nuclear.
Meanwhile, our own federal State of Hydrogen 2022 report showed Australia produced and used 494,277 tonnes of hydrogen, not an iota of which was made with wind or solar.
That didn’t matter.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen was in and had dug back into the taxpayers’ wallet, posing in tradie yellow with the man he calls Twiggy, announcing green hydrogen would run not just Australia but the world and create tens of thousands of jobs.
Suddenly, taxpayers had gone from spending $300m on green hydrogen to $2.5bn.
After offering Australian politicians a steady stream of photo opportunities in tradie brights against red dirt, Dr Forrest has conceded that Fortescue will not produce 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030 and sacked 700 people.
Fortescue on Friday said it had not received any funding for dead projects.
Fortescue opened Australia’s largest hydrogen electrolyser manufacturing facility in Gladstone in April, and the town where state and federal politicians of every stripe promised thousands of green hydrogen jobs, on opening will employ just 26 people.
Yet the Queensland government still claims to be fast on track to become “a world leader in renewable hydrogen”.
Chris Bowen still promises 9000 hydrogen jobs there.
Even after this sobering reality check, prepare for another Dorothy Dixer when parliament resumes. A Labor backbencher will ask how many jobs there are in green hydrogen, and Mr Albanese or Mr Bowen or both will claim that Australian green hydrogen would be the saviour of the world and the future of the nation.
The Coalition can’t ask from opposition because it was swallowing Dr Forrest’s same green hydrogen pills.
Where is the apology to former resource ministers Keith Pitt and Matt Canavan, who warned this wasn’t going to work, and all the engineers and chemical engineers who saw through the spin of brash claims of running the country on this utopia?
Most importantly, where is our money?
What exactly were the contract conditions? How much has been expended on green hydrogen to run the world? Is there anything left?
How many billions more need to come from taxpayers’ wallets while they stop gas connections to your house, stop the installation of wood-fired heaters and tell you how many light bulbs you are allowed to install in your new build?
When Albo tells you to check your pay slip, and you have $36 in tax savings, are you happy with the lump sum you are paying in tax to subsidise companies playing Fantasyland?
Holland once decided you could run an economy on tulips. Australia has decided we can run not just ourselves but the globe on wind turbines, splitting water into green hydrogen to make steel.
We have just had a three-month-long wind drought, proving our reliance on coal.
The jobs that were promised to be tens of thousands are actually a handful.
It’s all even better than the tulips.
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