Andrew Forrest’s green revolution pitch making waves ahead of Cop26

Fortescue miner Andrew Forrest is helping recalibrate Australia’s image from a climate laggard into a productive can-do hydrogen pioneer with a green revolution pitch ahead of COP26.

Andrew Forrest in London.

Australia’s richest man Fortescue Mining Group’s chairman Andrew Forrest has spent four years studying and then months preparing for this moment: convincing the world that green hydrogen is the future and reassuring Australia that the future is very bright by securing its own energy supplies.

At the very time prime minister Scott Morrison is lauded for his bravery in getting the country to commit to net zero by 2050, Dr Forrest is helping recalibrate Australia’s image from a climate laggard into a productive can-do hydrogen pioneer.

“This is the age of water now, not the age of oil,’’ he says, taking a line from his mother Judith who quizzed him about he was turning away from Pilbara iron ore to hydrogen.

Said Dr Forrest: “I talked her through the economics and the fact that if you couldn’t make eliminating global warming profitable it probably would never be eliminated. I told her how I was going to do it and she said ‘this is the oil versus water argument’ and I have never forgotten. I would much rather be in that water corner than a polluting fuel from the bowels of the earth corner’’.

In the past few weeks in phone calls behind the scenes from London, the billionaire founder of Fortescue has been helpfully steering politicians, including from the National Party to come on board to net zero in 2050 and to support his Green Revolution.

Dr Forrest says he has never worked harder in his life than trying to stop global warming after taking a “hellish four year” PhD in marine science in 2019 to understand the impact of warming oceans. He said those on the land, from farmers to miners, are often mis-portrayed because they are the “most innovative people’’.

He has shown some sceptical politicians how farmers, frustrated with the soaring cost of fertiliser, can benefit if fertiliser plants use green hydrogen, sourced locally rather than using imported gas.

Practically, he will spend $400m converting the Brisbane plant of Incitec Pivot to green energy keeping 400 local jobs and will produce about 50,000 tonnes of renewable hydrogen which will be converted to green ammonia for domestic and export markets. Dr Forrest told The Australian this week such examples of industry “underscores the whole sovereign risk of energy, which Australia suffers.’’

He added: “So, our future, our standard of living for ourselves and the kids are being determined by people who we will never meet and they will probably never visit. Why would you do that if there’s, if there’s one shot, We have complete sovereignty over energy at all times, and it’s made here by local punters, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Here in a central London street, a stone’s throw from the V & A Museum, Dr Forrest is making the biggest waves ahead of the United Nations Climate Conference, COP26 which starts next Monday in Glasgow.

For who better to listen to than one of the world’s biggest miners and industrialists who appears in tune with European sentiment that carbon emissions have to go?

The 59-year-old is not only talking about green hydrogen, but putting significant billion dollar investments into making it happen and the most influential leaders, from royalty to billionaire investors and global business leaders are opening their doors and listening.

Some might need a language translator guide, for plain speaking Dr Forrest talks about “the punters’’ and “the cocky’s’’ but no one misunderstands his impact and a desire for immediate and practical pathways. He will have two key speaking spots at the Cop26 conference to explain his vision.

Incitec Pivot worker Christie Rossi (left)with Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest from Fortescue Future Industries during a hydrogen announcement at Incitec Pivot on Gibson Island in Brisbane this month.

Earlier this month Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries announced construction of a Green Energy Manufacturing Centre in Queensland with 2GW of electrolysers – which make hydrogen out of water – expected in 2023 as well as making wind turbines, solar panels and electrical cables.

“I put $120 million on the table to double the world‘s capacity of electrolysers - I think it’s pretty small investment, we’re taking that up several times to a billion dollars, because if you have a state which is really encouraging green energy, and a great future which is Queensland, then you need to put the manufacturing there,’’ he said.

In August Dr Forrest injected $1.03 billion in funding to Fortescue Future Industries for future hydrogen investments.

Dr Forrest says by the end of the COP26 fortnight he wants leaders of the industrial world to have a different understanding of Australia being behind the starting blocks of the green revolution. The pandemic hasn’t helped with the global image of Australia, what with closed borders for two years seemingly sheltering many Australians from what has been happening elsewhere.

“The truth has been denied into our country. It allows people to really peddle misinformation of fear,’’ Dr Forrest told The Australian.

“And there are still politicians who will stand by a platform of peddling misinformation of fear, whereas the future I see very clearly for the Australian farmer, the Australian regional worker, is at long last, their future won’t be pegged to how a couple of sovereign leaders from Russia and Saudi Arabia, wake up with a headache or not and adjust (the price of oil and gas) and impact on whether or not cocky’s can send the kids to school.’’

He added: “we can make all our energy right here at home’’. But he wants a level playing field where the “fat’’ billion dollar subsidies to “old technology’’ are put on a level playing field so that within eight years Australians could be given a choice of buying fossil fuels, or buying green hydrogen, green ammonia or electrification.

Dr Forrest said “it is important for global leaders to know that Australia will be a huge part of the world‘s green industry revolution, that we will not drop the ball at that, and we will be a major player’’.

He said green energy sovereignty is within the grasp of Australia for the first time and the country will be very competitive supplier of green energy to the rest of the world.

He believes Australia will quickly catch up and overtake other nations and that talk of “a transition’’ from fossil fuels to green is illusionary. He says no one talked about transition from the typewriter to the computer, and that very quickly the cost of green energy will be on par with fossil fuels.

He said the change will come very quickly as green ammonia, green electricity and green hydrogen can feed every part of the industrial supply chain “be it cement, be it steel, be in fertiliser, be it mobility, you can answer any of that with electricity, with ammonia or hydrogen and that can all be pulled down from an infinite source, now.”

“So I just want them agreeing, ‘let’s get on with a practical implementable solution’.”