Andrew Forrest floats the purchase of West Virginia coal power plants after US visit
The mining billionaire said he was considering investing in as many as 22 power stations in coal-dependent West Virginia which could be converted to use renewable energy.
Fortescue Metals could invest in US power stations and convert them to run on renewable energy, the company’s chairman Andrew Forrest says.
In an interview with The Australian on Tuesday, Dr Forrest said he was considering investing in as many as 22 power stations in the coal state of West Virginia which could be converted to use renewable energy – particularly green hydrogen energy.
The billionaire mining magnate made the comments after a visit to the US, where he travelled to West Virginia to meet Democrat senator Joe Manchin, an influential figure in Congress.
“There’s 26 of these (coal fired) power plants in West Virginia alone and we can look at 22 of them,” Dr Forrest said. “All these coal-fired power stations are going to go from worthless scrap metal with huge environmental liabilities, with negative value.”
Fortescue, which is transitioning itself from a pure iron ore play into a renewable energy company through its new Fortescue Future Industries arm, was expecting that it would face competition to buy for the power stations, Dr Forrest added.
“We won’t be able to walk in and grab them,” he said.
“We will be there to compete.”
“But we are there to invest. We are very happy to do this.”
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After West Virginia, where he visited a coal fired power station in the town of Pleasant Valley, Dr Forrest travelled to the White House where he met Joe Biden as he outlined his vision for a green energy future based on green hydrogen power.
Dr Forrest said he had first met the Mr Manchin at a meeting of the International Energy Agency in Paris where he was talking about his vision for a green hydrogen future.
He said this had led to the visit to West Virginia and his desire to see a coal fired power station in the state. The state is known for its long history of coal mining – the fossil fuel powers most of the state’s energy consumption.
Dr Forrest said he had told the workers at the power station – whose families were moving away from West Virginia with the closing down of the coal mining industry – that a green energy fired power station would need twice as many workers to operate than a traditional coal fired power plant.
Dr Forrest said he would consider investing in the power stations through Fortescue Future Industries. Dr Forrest’s overseas trip also included a visit to Europe where he made deals for green energy power including a major deal with Germany’s largest energy group E. ON to explore shipping green energy from Australia to Europe.
The agreement with FFI will look at ways to ship up to five million tonnes of hydrogen generated from renewables to Europe by 2030.
The deal came as Germany is now looking for ways to reduce its heavy dependence on gas from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. The deal struck with E. ON could deliver up to a third of the energy needed by Germany to replace the gas from Russia.
But Fortescue was forced in late March to walk back earlier comments made by Dr Forrest after the ASX queried the company’s lack of disclosure to investors.,
While Fortescue has committed to spend 10 per cent of its net profit on FFI, the amount of capital needed to deliver projects has stoked growing concerns among some of the company‘s major investors and analysts about the speed and scale of its global commitments.
On Tuesday, Dr Forrest rejected scepticism that his vision for a growing role for green hydrogen as a replacement for coal and gas fired power was too ambitious, including comments this week by Shell’s London-based head of hydrogen, Paul Bogers.
He said he saw scepticism about his plans for the potential of green hydrogen as being similar to those he had when he first developed Fortescue as an iron ore company starting out with a lower grade deposit of iron than its long established competitors including BHP and Rio.
Mr Bogers said he admired Dr Forrest’s move to sign up deals around the world including in Europe for green hydrogen powered energy, but felt the deals could be a lot harder than Dr Forrest thought to pull off.
