Andrew Forrest has King Charles’ ear on hydrogen

Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest has spoken to the King and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London about his quest to have heavy industry running on clean, green hydrogen.

Andrew Forrest has met with King Charles and Rishi Sunak. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest has spoken to the King and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London about his quest to have heavy industry running on clean, green hydrogen.

Dr Forrest, who set up a green hydrogen subsidiary Fortescue Future Industries on the back of his iron ore mining company, was one of several hundred environmental leaders and businessmen invited to a Buckingham Palace reception on Friday night after the British government, firstly Liz Truss and then her replacement Rishi Sunak determined that the King should stay away from COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Dr Forrest said both he and the King were aligned about the importance of green energy, and that to get fossil fuel companies on board “we have to engage with them, ignoring them won’t work’’.

“We get on like a house on fire … He’s been a complete visionary,’’ Dr Forrest said about the King’s four decades-long environmental advocacy.

“There’s no pretence (between us), there’s no greenwashing.”

Earlier in the day the King hosted a working lunch at Lancaster House with Dr Forrest and a select few dozen business executives to help his own environmental push: the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

Under Charles’ encouragement this initiative brings together major leaders from some of the world’s biggest companies to help transform corporate strategies and operations and attract investment and incentives. The King has been clear that the world has no choice: it must step beyond fossil fuel.

While the King will be absent from this year’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Dr Forrest’s foundation Minderoo has its own pavilion in the VIP-government blue zone and his Fortescue Future Investments, the green hydrogen company, is in the public green zone.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which catapulted the energy markets into a tailspin has put this year’s COP at crossroads.

Dr Forrest is urging countries to look to the United States, where the Biden administration just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $391bn on measures to back initiatives dealing with energy and climate change.

He also wants heavy industry to look at his own iron ore company Fortescue Metals Group Metals which he has vowed to achieve real zero terrestrial emissions across its iron ore operations by 2030.

“If you step out of where we are now say 10 years time five years back and now you’ll see very clearly that the world went through its last gasp where fossil fuels were proven to be completely unreliable, bringing chaos and misery, a high cost of living to billions of people,” Dr Forrest told The Australian.

“It just simply cannot be relied on as a future fuel source where the more you use it, the more expensive it becomes when we have green energy around us everywhere. And we’re just being too lazy to tap it.”