Hydrogen energy jackpot ‘ours if we act fast’, says Andrew Forrest
Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew Forrest is pitching hydrogen energy as Australia’s renewable energy future.
Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew Forrest is pitching hydrogen energy as Australia’s renewable energy future, predicting it could become a $US12 trillion ($15.5 trillion) global industry with the right policies.
In his first Boyer lecture to be broadcast on ABC TV on Saturday and radio on Sunday, Oil v Water: Confessions of a Carbon Emitter, Mr Forrest says Australia – and Fortescue – has the potential to be a world leader in the sector, “but only if it acts fast”.
He has vowed his company, Fortescue, will become one of the world’s largest renewable energy production companies, challenging electric car company Tesla for its role in green energy related product, and has announced plans for Fortescue to back a pilot plant to produce “green steel”, which he says has the potential to create an industry using Australia’s vast resources of iron ore to make steel using “green energy”.
He says Australia has the potential to become a key player in a “green steel” industry, creating an industry to replace jobs lost by the decline of the coal industry.
Mr Forrest’s plans as outlined in the speech foreshadow a major repositioning of Fortescue which is largely an iron ore producer selling almost all of its product to China, generating net profit of more than $US4.7bn last financial year.
In the speech he noted Fortescue has a has a market capitalisation of less than $US60bn – but it made a net profit, after tax, of over $US940m – just last month.
He says hydrogen energy was the solution to the need to move the world away from its dependence on fossil fuels.
“Hydrogen is the most common element in existence,” he says. “The universe is 75 per cent hydrogen so we never run out of it. To make it, all you need to do is run electricity through water.
“Green hydrogen, the purest source of energy in the world, could replace up to three-quarters of our emissions if we improve the technology and had the scale.”
He says the question “wasn’t whether green hydrogen would become the next global energy form, but who would be the first to mass-produce it”.
“Green” hydrogen is “virtually ignored by the economic world”, he says, which is “missing a colossal opportunity.”
He says there are challenges in transporting green hydrogen “but we are cracking that … Australia is sitting on everything it needs to be world leader but only if it acts fast”.
He says China, Japan and South Korea have made promises over the past year to put almost eight million hydrogen-fuelled cell cars on the road, while UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is investing £12bn in green energy and has banned the sale of fossil fuel engines by 2030. Australia is investing $300m in hydrogen.
Mr Forrest was speaking after leading a team of 40 people to almost 50 countries in five months to discuss renewable energy investments with political leaders.
He contracted COVID from an interpreter during the trip, spending three days on oxygen in a Swiss hospital in an isolation chamber before resuming his travels.
Mr Forrest says China is making a massive move into green energy “without fanfare”.
Fortescue will become a “first mover” in taking the risk of producing “green hydrogen (on a) global, industrial scale,” he says.
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