“Greenwashing” is the term coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld, to describe when a company markets itself as doing more for the environment than it actually is.
A prime example of greenwashing would be a mining billionaire, who made a fortune by selling ore that is processed into steel by the single largest polluter in the world, touting “net zero” emissions to “save the planet”.
Andrew Forrest’s upstart green energy arm has long-term plans to produce 50 million tonnes a year of renewable clean hydrogen, making it equivalent to the output of some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.
And how will they produce said “clean hydrogen”? Um… renewables… and stuff.
In a speech to be given to a webinar hosted by the Clean Energy Council on Wednesday, Dr Forrest said Fortescue Metals Group subsidiary Fortescue Future Industries would be producing 15 million tonnes of renewable green hydrogen a year by 2030.
He said this would increase to 50 million tonnes a year over time, “a scale equal to the very largest oil and gas companies today”, which would help “build Australia into the renewable green hydrogen superpower of the world”.
Dr Forrest said FFI had reached agreements with countries all over the world to develop “significant energy sources” to produce renewable green hydrogen.
Such as…?
To produce 50 million tonnes of hydrogen by electrolysis, for example, would require over one and a half trillion kWh, or 5.94 exajoules of energy. Australia’s primary energy consumption in 2020 was 5.59 exajoules. So, Forrest is proposing almost to duplicate Australia’s entire current energy consumption, simply to produce hydrogen.
Dr Forrest […] said FMG — which he founded 18 years ago – generated more than two million tonnes of greenhouse gas a year. He said the answer was not to stop iron ore mining but to reduce its carbon emissions and to develop the company into a major renewable energy producer with a strong focus on “green hydrogen”.
That conveniently ignores the greenhouse gases emitted by Forrest’s customer, China. If Australia is held to account for the CO2 emitted by coal burned in India, it seems only fair to hold FMG to account for its share of the 1.3 billion tonnes of CO2 belched out by China’s steel production.
But, don’t ask inconvenient questions, just get soft-soaped by the green rhetoric.
“We are in a race to save the environment as we know it,” he said. “A race to net zero.”
He said the UN climate change conference in Glasgow in November would be the world’s “last chance to slow, then stop, the planet cooking”.
Then there’s this knee-slapper.
He said it was “critical to guard against” allowing those with vested interests to “draw out a long transition period using fossil fuel hydrocarbons to produce hydrogen.”
The Australian
“Vested interests” he says. Presumably with a straight face and all.
But then, this is the person who leads a global campaign against slavery, while making his fortune from one of the largest slave-owning states in the world.
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