An Australian mining magnate wants to save the planet with green hydrogen
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/11/24/twiggy-forrest-green-hydrogen/
Author: Evan Halper
The Australian billionaire expresses few regrets about his company and its partners having pumped millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or the bitter legal conflicts with Aboriginal officials over ecological destruction allegedly committed by his firm, Foscue Metals Group. He prefers the label “heavy industrialist.” Don’t call him a “greenie.” Yet as the world reaches an energy inflection point, Forrest is now a point man for audacious climate action, with his sights set on the United States. He is betting the future of his $34 billion company on a plunge into “green hydrogen,” a superfuel theoretically capable of powering jet planes, large machines and even electricity plants without any carbon footprint. Forrest says he will make 15 million tons by 2030, a scale and pace others doubt. The billionaire boasts he will erase fossil fuels from Foscue’s operations and supply huge quantities of the new fuel to others. “Some are arguing that the technology we need to beat global warming is not with us yet,” Forrest said as a black SUV zipped him from his penthouse suite at the Denver Ritz-Carlton earlier this fall to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is collaborating with him. “I say that is completely false. The most optimal technologies aren’t with us yet, but we’ve got enough now to make huge heavy-industry companies green.”