Just weeks ago Fortescue shed 700 workers and dumped a target to be a major producer of green hydrogen by 2030, but the miner’s billionaire owner Andrew Forrest still insists his native Pilbara can supply the globe with green iron.
Straight from a dinner in China the night before, the company founder pointed to the red dirt at his feet at Fortescue’s Cloudbreak mine, said, “this is rich iron,” then turned his hand up to the blue sky and said, “and that is energy.”
Andrew Forrest after driving a prototype hydrogen-powered electric haul truck called Europa – named after a moon of hydrogen-filled Jupiter.Credit: Peter Milne
The simple proposition of combining ample raw material and energy occurring in the same place will succeed or fail on practicalities.
When questioned about whether he is overly ambitious, Forrest always has the justified retort that many doubted if then tiny Fortescue could break the BHP-Rio Tinto duopoly and become the third force in Pilbara iron ore mining.
Fortescue’s $53 billion market capitalisation is proof he got it right, but Forrest’s next challenge is tougher.
His first success, in iron ore, was as a late entrant into an existing business. This time he wants to be one of the first movers into a sector that hardly exists outside the laboratory.
Steelmaking produces by some counts 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of it is made from iron ore – a mix of iron and oxygen – in huge integrated steel plants.
First the oxygen is removed in a process called reduction, using coal for heat and to aid the chemical reaction. The result is iron, and an enormous amount of carbon pollution. Next the iron is refined and turned into steel.
Forrest wants the first, most polluting part of the process, to be done in the Pilbara and to ship the zero-emissions green iron to the world.
Source Agencies
