The party is over,’ declared Australian mining magnate turned eco-warrior, Andrew Forrest – who is known as Twiggy in his home country.
Speaking in a gravelly Antipodean brogue from a breakfast table laden with tea and toast, the tycoon claimed fossil fuels are in ‘terminal decline’. And he warned ‘climate change chaos’ would wipe out the entire human race if left unchecked.
The message in the video was neither subtle nor intended.
Give it some gas: Australian mining magnate turned eco-warrior, Andrew Forrest (pictured) describes cleanly-produced hydrogen as the ‘fuel of the future’
For this rallying call to ditch fossil fuels and save the planet also marked Twiggy’s latest naked sales pitch for green hydrogen power, which he described as the ‘fuel of the future’.
The 59-year-old – who has already amassed a £15billion fortune from the iron ore riches of Western Australia – was perfectly open about his desire to cash in from tackling climate change.
It would also be free of guilt.
He said: ‘The great thing is when you make a serious dollar out of it, you can still go home and you can look your kids straight in the eye, not a lump of guilt in our throat.’
In his home country of Australia, the iron ore billionaire has become a household name. He is not well-known in the UK.
This could change because Forrest – founder of mining giant Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) – has his sights set on bringing green hydrogen power to Britain.
Lord Bamford is a chairman at JCB, a manufacturing company that has dominated British business for over 100 years and an excellent backer.
Just before Cop26 got underway, Forrest announced a huge hydrogen export deal with JCB and Ryze Hydrogen, a firm set up by Lord Bamford’s son Jo.
The agreement will see Fortescue Future Industries – FMG’s green energy arm – become the largest supplier of hydrogen in the UK.
JCB will buy 10 per cent of Fortescue’s global green hydrogen production – or 1.5m tonnes a year – and then manage its distribution in Britain.
Forrest has said the deal will be worth between £5.1billion and £6.6billion annually – if, of course, he can produce hydrogen at this scale.
Many are extremely skeptical, and feel that green hydrogen has not been proven. But it represents one of the first major global hydrogen export deals and will be – according to Forrest – the first of many.
He estimates the green hydrogen market could generate revenues of £9 trillion by 2050, dwarfing any other industry.
Boris Johnson (with Lord Bamford, JCB chairman): Heavyweights JCB will buy 10% of Fortescue’s global green hydrogen production – or 1.5m tonnes a year
Forrest became Australia’s richest man – though not richest person as the top spot is claimed by mining magnate, and his Perth neighbour, Gina Rinehart – after founding Fortescue Metals Group almost 20 years ago.
Having generated more than his fair share of carbon emissions over the years, he is trying to save the planet – and make another vast wad in the process.
His Damascene conversion has seen him develop a fixation on ‘green’ hydrogen power, which he says will replace fossil fuels and be critical to tackling climate change.
Glasgow’s Cop26 summit, crammed with world leaders, captains of industry and financiers, represented the ultimate sales opportunity for Twiggy and his team.
‘Green’ hydrogen power uses renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power to create electricity.
An electrolyser is then used to pass an electric current through water in order to separate hydrogen from oxygen.
BP, Shell and other energy companies are making huge investments in the production of blue hydrogen. Blue hydrogen uses methane extracted from natural gas to produce electricity. It is also cheaper to produce.
But blue hydrogen has been dismissed by Forrest as a ‘charade’ because it still generates carbon emissions which are then stored in the ground.
Boris Johnson has talked of transforming Britain into the ‘Qatar of hydrogen’, with households eventually using hydrogen gas made across Northern England to cook their breakfast.
Forrest can have hydrogen to fry bacon and eggs in the UK, and other parts of the world, if that happens.
JCB is convinced that hydrogen energy can play an important role in heavy industry.
Last month it announced it is investing £100m to develop ‘super-efficient’ hydrogen engines for its machines, which it hopes will be on sale by the end of next year.
But the scope of Forrest’s ambition in hydrogen power is on a different level. Forrest has committed to producing 15 million tonnes of hydrogen per year by 2030. This is a far greater amount than the current global production.
Fortescue is confident that it will meet this goal. He has also pledged to be carbon neutral in 2030. Fortescue was 20 years ahead of the 2050 target for net zero, agreed upon by several developed countries.
In order to produce industrial amounts of hydrogen, large quantities of solar panels, wind generators, and hydro-electricity systems will be required. This is the greatest problem associated with green hydrogen.
It is hugely difficult and expensive to produce – one of the reasons why Tesla boss Elon Musk has branded the concept of hydrogen powered cars as ‘mind bogglingly stupid’.
Forrest remains unaffected. He recently announced plans to build the world’s largest hydrogen manufacturing facility in Central Queensland, which is expected to double the world’s hydrogen production capacity.
There are also hydrogen projects in Papua New Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is also working on them in Kenya and Ethiopia. In his quest to make hydrogen a global power, he has traveled around the globe in private aircraft.
As part of a PR blitz in London before heading up to Glasgow for the Cop26 summit, Forrest had a fleet of black cabs painted green and emblazoned with the Fortescue Future Industries logo, and the message: ‘Green hydrogen can save us’.
Twiggy might be the richest environmentalist of them all, if he is correct.