Is The Tide Turning On Hydrogen? Ep210: Andrew Forrest

BW  

How are you transporting the hydrogen, right? Not an easy thing to transport. Like, there's a certain amount of pressure it needs to be kept under. Or it's turned into ammonia and these, that's not an easy substance to move around. 

AF 

If you're shipping it's got to be ammonia. Hydrogen likes pipes.

BW  

Really? No it doesn't, I mean, you have to retrofit your pipes in order for it not to escape, which is a big deal, right? 

AF  

Well, look, I can say doing anything is a big deal, which is new. I mean, if we don't do something because it's a big deal, all it is is stopping the smallest molecule in the universe.

BW  

That's quite a big deal. That is quite a big deal. 

BW  
  
Hello, I'm Bryony Worthington, and this is Cleaning Up. My guest this week may seem to some an unlikely climate warrior. As the Executive Chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group, one of the world's largest iron ore companies, Andrew Forrest is not an easy to pigeonhole industrial billionaire. He built Fortescue into a hugely successful company, partly thanks to his belief in taking unconventional paths. And after a serious accident meant he had to take a break from work, he enrolled in a PhD in marine science, and for over a decade now, has been very vocally committed to getting his company's practices aligned with a climate-safe pathway. More recently, he's also been shaking fellow CEOs and leaders out of climate complacency by highlighting the risks of lethal humidity. I wanted to ask Andrew about the current climate crusade he's on, and specifically as the owner and operator of a global shipping fleet, what he makes of the recent policy decisions taken by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Carbon penalties for highly emitting ships have been recently agreed as the IMO strives to create a global regulatory framework to reach net zero shipping by around 2050. It is a lively conversation recorded in person in London at the end of April, and we covered a wide range of other topics, including the relative roles fuels play versus electrification, hydrogen safety, electrolyser innovation, nuclear power, and whether hydrogen is a greenhouse gas. Andrew was charming throughout, but he didn't pull any punches. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please welcome Andrew Forrest to Cleaning Up. 

BW   

Andrew, can I call you Andrew?

AF  

Bryony. Andrew, Twiggy, whatever you like. 

BW  

Okay, I'm so delighted you've managed to find the time to be with us today. But I just wanted to kick this conversation off by asking you to introduce yourself in your own words, please. 

AF  

Hey Bryony, I'm Andrew Forrest. I'm chairman and founder of the Fortescue group; Tattarang, which is one of Australia's largest private equity groups and is leading the energy transition in Australia, and the Minderoo Foundation, which is a global Asia Pacific-based philanthropic group.

BW  

Fantastic. Well, the reason we're looking to get you on is because you have become something of a towering figure in this conversation about the transition from traditional fossil fuel-based economies into the clean future. I wanted to know what turned you on to this. 

AF  

Oh, look, we became really sensitive to what was happening around climate as early as 2013. We couldn't see a way out. We knew that commerce wouldn't stop doing commerce because people needed to make a profit to pay the taxes to keep the roof over everyone's head, and the hospitals and schools going. So we knew at the end of the day, it had to come down to commerce. But we couldn't see a replacement for oil and gas until we discovered hydrogen, and the possibility of making hydrogen out of solar and wind. And so I'm not sure if it's us or others who coined the term 'green hydrogen', but I think we were the first to run major studies in 10, 20, 30-gigawatt scale, to convert that electricity to hydrogen with water. And we did that back in 2013. But in late 2014, I had a really serious accident, and I came out of hospital in a wheelchair, and my kids basically persuaded me, 'Hey, Dad, you've always wanted to study the oceans. You've always been worried about the climate. Now's your time to go back to university, go back to school.' And so I did. I applied for a masters. They rejected that. They said, 'No, you've been doing research for 30 years. You know how to do it. We'll accept you for a PhD.' And I was a bit shocked by that, because I thought two years would be plenty, and I knew a PhD would be four years of hard work. And in the end, I agreed to do a PhD, and I chose marine ecology, and I wrote a thesis called 'Solutions for a Troubled Ocean.' And in that thesis, I discovered the tremendous damage which is being done to the oceans where 98% of the world's livable environment is, and that we're only seeing the little fractions of damage which is happening in the land or terrestrial environment. Yet that is severe. That is really severe. So I thought I've got to devote everything I can to stopping global warming. And I'm not sure if it's just in time or if I'm too late, but I'm very glad I, myself, and every group, every company, every philanthropy, everything I do, is committed to the cause of ending global warming.

BW  

But in that account, though, when you were first thinking about the energy transition, that was pre that PhD. What was driving that? Was it pressure from your board? Was it investors? Was it just your grandchildren? What was the reason?

AF  

Look, it was general reading. It was chatting with the kids. It was understanding the perspectives which were concerning them. Then it was researching those perspectives. Are these perspectives real? Are they just marketing? And I thought, no, actually my concerns and their concerns, they're coming from two different directions. Theirs is more around consumerism. Mine is around heavy industry, but the two concerns are aligning. So look, it was genuinely a joint family effort to really weaponize us as people who were going to take on global warming for everything we could. 

BW  

Let's talk a little bit about Fortescue and the story there. Because obviously you grew this to be an incredibly successful company, and you did it kind of against the odds, didn't you? You took a kind of big bet that paid off. Tell us about that.

AF  

Oh, look the the seaborne iron ore industry is one of the most immensely profitable and most viciously protected, highest barriers to entry industries in the world. It was run as good as a cartel back then, and I felt that was dangerous. I don't think it was serving the interest of Western Australia, and I grew up in this region. I actually grew up in the iron ore Pilbara regions. And I thought there's only one way to go at this: You either attempt to be huge or nothing. There is no middle ground in this business. I remember an Anglo American executive who tried but failed to crack — Anglo, then the world's biggest mining company — into the iron ore sector. And I said, 'Why do you want to get in iron ore?' He said, 'Andrew, where does an elephant sleep?' I said, 'I don't know.' He said, 'Wherever it wants.' And so I figured that he meant 'this is a giants game, stay out of it.' But look, I took it on. We we did break whatever it was — a cartel or an understanding. It became every company for himself at that stage, or herself. And that was a very good thing, because that was on the cusp of China's production of steel exploding — if it had supply. And my argument was, China and Asia's consumption of steel is going to go through the roof. We're not going to be ready. You're restricting supply to try and keep everyone else out. That's going to be seen as wholly responsible. We all need to — BHP, Rio Tinto, Vale, Fortescue, we all need to massively increase our production. No one company will be a hero here. 

BW  

And so what was it then? It was you bought a big land bank that managed to break the cartel? It was kind of low-grade iron ore?

AF  

Well look, it was super interesting? There was a kind of agreement back then, in the mining sector, in the mining compliance sections of government, that if you're in the Pilbara and you're BHP and Rio, you didn't really have to comply with the Mining Act, because you'd done enough for the state. And I just thought that thinking was completely upended. I mean, it was crazy. The state's done so much for them, not the other way around. And so I challenged the fact that these companies were holding basically vast areas of land without any obligations to the Mining Act to maintain their rights to hold that land. So I challenged them, I challenged BHP, I challenged Rio Tinto, and I challenged the government. And we were a tiny company. Everyone laughed, but I said, 'Honestly, my lawyers are going to be as good as yours.' And in the end, the government woke up and said to BHP and Rio he's right, drop all that tenements, drop all that land. And of course, they did, and we pegged them.

BW  

Wow. So you were using your insights into the law and the policy making in government to get that edge and that wedge into the sector.

AF  

Yeah to get that edge and also, many companies had tried to break in, but they just accepted that there was this unwritten rule that you couldn't challenge the big guys in the Pilbara. And I thought...

BW  

You were kind of like a David and a Goliath story, with the very good weapon of law.

AF  

I was prepared to have a crack. 

BW  

Good, so courage is part of your DNA then,  taking all these big bets.

AF  

I think an easy understanding that failure is a real option and should be embraced, okay, and if we were rebuffed back, then we failed. Come back and have another crack another way. But failure is the best learning source you can ever put. 

BW  

That's quite a nice segue for my next question, which is, as you described it, you were looking for a substitute for your main source of emissions, right? Which is presumably fuels going into your equipment, and your ships and then the emissions arising from the processing of your ore. But you were looking for a fuel substitute, is that a fair characterization? 

AF  

Yeah, look, we're always fans of green electrons, of green electricity. We could see the common sense in it, in either the emergence in those early days of batteries, cables, etc. But what we felt we needed for huge ships and for massive industries is a fuel. And so we went after hydrogen, and we spent 6, 7, 8 years failing, and I think now we're on the cusp of success. 

BW  

What makes you confident that you're on the cusp of success?

AF  

That we have been able to make electrolysers, which were the size of that great big table there. And that's if you want a PEM electrolyzer, it'll look like that, only four times higher. And we've now been able to make the same power electrolyzer smaller than this chair. But what do the economics look like? The economics have improved with the scale and simplicity. So that electrolyzer, which is on the marketplace now, is hugely complex and enormous, this electrolyzer is small and simple, yet makes the most of the energy being fed into it. It'll use 95% of the energy. The standard electrolyzer will use 60 to 70%, so you waste 30 to 40%. We waste 4-5% like next to nothing. And that all goes into making hydrogen.

BW  

But are you somewhat concerned that if you rank hydrogen versus other substitutes? So we could talk about bio ethanol or even just using the electrons directly and using big cables to move around, that hydrogen may lose out just because of the round trip efficiency and that it's just it's a difficult molecule to work with, right? 

AF  

Look, it's a really fun molecule. For anything which is making a fuel, hydrogen is the only way to go if you want to be sustainable. As soon as you go bio this, or you've got anything with a C in the chemical chain, or anything which competes with food, which is anything which is bio, you've got a really big problem. I mean, I fly over Papua New Guinea, where we have a number of historical archeological projects, and there the country is being raped by palm oil. Now if that palm oil stops being used for food, it starts being used for fuel, you're just going to see destruction of jungles all over the world. I think if we look at bioenergy as anything more than a boutique specialist, very small fuel, then it's dangerous for our environment. The only way to get an infinite source of fuel at a competitive cost is hydrogen. 

BW  

Just to be devil's advocate, there'd be many people who would say that actually, the burning of fuel is what's going to reduce down to a very few number of uses, because we can use direct electrons. I mean, I we've all had our moment where hydrogen seems like the silver bullet for everything. I certainly did, until I was put right by a professor in Cambridge whopointed out to me some of the thermodynamics and the...  

AF  

Yeah, the Cambridge professor is very half, right? I mean, I have it up with academics all the time. So if he's from Cambridge, just down the road, there are three large battery electric centers, both in research and manufacturing, all Fortescue. I invite your professor to go and see them. We are world leading in British batteries, both huge industrial use and racing cars. We charge our racing cars in 20 seconds. So super fast, super powerful. Britain, through Fortescue Zero, is leading the world. However, it's not going to answer world shipping. It's not going to answer massive industrial heating. There's only so much you can do with electricity and batteries? It becomes a scale issue.

BW  

Let's move on to perhaps, considering some of the...

AF  

But batteries are at 15-20% of their penetration. They've still got 500% to go.

BW  

Right, exactly. And interestingly, when it came to your own vehicles, your own kind of heavy machinery, those have been electrified, right? They're not running on hydrogen.

AF  

Oh, look, we have what we call massive boosters. So these are chargers, not much smaller than this room. They're great big hydrogen fuel cells. So they go out to remote operations with fuel on them, and they charge the battery system of our trucks and our diggers, etc, etc. So yes, when you're looking for very large storage, our hydrogen mobile charging units are fantastic. Batteries, though, have a huge future. So we don't have one horse in the race — hydrogen — we are the prime technologist for Britain, perhaps Europe, in the research of batteries. We're getting hard into the production of batteries, and also in the production of hydrogen. If you ignore hydrogen, you ignore it at your peril. We were never trendy hydrogen. 

BW  

Yeah, but I think that's what most people say. You back a few horses, and for certain cases, some things are going to come out as the lead, but that's not the Swiss Army knife that's going to solve all the problems. 

AF  

Yeah, let me give you an example. I mean, if you want to send energy a long way, say overland, you've got all these massive pipelines transporting gas. They're not transporting power. They don't burn the gas, make electricity and then put it through overhead cables, they transport gas, because the loss on transmission of overland or undersea cables or transmission lines, is really serious.

BW  

Well, it was until the Chinese got involved, right? I mean, the HVDC high voltage cables, you know they're doing 1,000 kilometers.

AF  

And still experiencing a drop of 10 to 15%.

BW  

But when you have, if you're docking into vast amounts of solar in Morocco, or huge amounts of, let's hope hydro and nuclear in Canada, the distance...

AF  

You're sounding like a person who doesn't have to pay for it. That 10 or 15% is massive. 

BW  

But if you convert an electron to hydrogen, you're taking what 60% out in terms of round trip efficiency.

AF  

See that was the truth, right? Ours do 95% so I gave you that stat. You already knew it, 60 to 70%. But our electrolyzers are running at 95-96%

BW  

And why are you able to apparently defy the laws of thermodynamics? 

AF  

No, it's just simplification. I mean, if you see an old rocket engine, it'll be absolutely massive and complex. And if you see a modern rocket engine, it'll look like a pole. It's not defying anything, it's just better technology.

BW  

Well, let's see. Unless the economics that I've been seeing in terms of how much of a carbon subsidy you need to get hydrogen into these use cases...

AF  

Hang on, let's explore it, because I'm used to these old arguments, because they're based on old technology. Okay, so we are proposing from North Africa to Europe connections which will be driven off solar, which is not the solar you know now. They will be driven off wind, they won't look like the wind towers you're common with now, and they will transport short distance electrons and long distance hydrogen. And that hydrogen will be fed straight into gas turbines, which will click on, just like a normal coal or gas turbine clicks on when the sun goes down. And maintain 24 hour renewable energy. If you want 24-hour renewable energy at the sovereign scale,you've got to have something bigger than a battery. 

BW  

Agreed, but how are you transporting the hydrogen? It's not an easy thing to transport. Like there's a certain amount of pressure it needs to be kept under, or it's turned into ammonia and that's not an easy substance to move around. 

AF  

If you're shipping, it's got to be ammonia. Hydrogen likes pipes.

BW  

Really? No, it doesn't. I mean, you have to retrofit your pipes in order for it not to escape, which is a big deal, right?

AF  

I can say doing anything is a big deal, which is new. I mean, if we don't do something because it's a big deal... all it is is stopping the smallest molecule in the universe.

BW  

That's quite a big deal. That is quite a big deal. I mean, already we've got methane slip, right? And that's quite a big molecule. You are going to see a lot of hydrogen escaping, aren't you? I mean, you are.

AF  

Well, look, we have been operating hydrogen for several years now. In our plants, we haven't had any slippage. 

BW  

No slippage?

AF  

It likes pipes. And lining oil and gas pipes, delinquent oil and gas pipes, which are all round so they can take a great deal of pressure, is absolutely feasible. Now I'm not arguing that...  electrification... You seem to be saying you're either anti-hydrogen or pro-electrons. That's a big mistake. You send energy 2-3000 kilometers, the loss on transmission — doesn't matter what cable you use — it's gonna be too big.

ML  

Cleaning Up is brought to you by members of our new Leadership Circle: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP Portugal, Eurelectic, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit cleaningup.live, that’s cleaningup.live.     

BW  

I think my argument is really that you can't criticize transmission for a 10% loss and use a cost argument against that, when there is a cost to using hydrogen as a fuel. Because if you're just using the electrons, you can displace fossil more directly. You get like, two to nine times more carbon saved.

AF  

Yeah, great for all our cars and many of our small factories. But what do you do with a 350 ton ship? 

BW  

I think it comes back to ships, right? Ships, maybe fertilizers, there's some definite use cases. And I'm wondering, like, we just had a bit of a breakthrough at the International Maritime Organization where the shipping industry... So tell me about, did Fortescue get involved in that fight? Did you use law there?

AF  

No, we can't use law because it doesn't exist, but we're asking governments to create laws. We had the Green Pioneer, which is the world's first ammonia fueled ship. I took Sylvia Earle on that ship in Dubai. We were already blocked from sailing it into COP-28 because it's an oil and gas Mecca. Are COPs there to promote oil and gas or to fix the world? I'm getting a lot of evidence...

BW  

In recent years it's been very unclear, but maybe Brazil will bring us back to focus. 

AF  

Well, hopefully. But our ship wasn't allowed in and we had to switch off all its ammonia-based systems and sail it in under vegetable to be able to dock it there. I took Sylvia Earle, who I regard as one of the world's greatest conservationists, and she said — as she would, super smart — 'show me the smokestack.' I mean, it's great big ship. Show me the stack. Because on all ships, they've got great big smoke stacks for huge emissions. And I did. I took her, because the whole system is laid out like a deconstructed hamburger on the deck. You can see everything. And I took her up to this little pole, and she said, 'Is that the smokestack?' And I said, 'Yes, Sylvia, that's the smokestack.' And she said, 'Oh my God, my dear, that's a tear dropper. There's nothing.' So we had the Green Pioneer on Canary Wharf in London saying, 'hey, IMO, that's where your meetings are, don't say it can't be done, it's done.' This is the ship, and this is the start, and by the way...

BW  

And you've solved all the concerns about the engine room safety, because this is essentially bleach that we're talking about here. Not a nice substance to work with. But you've got the engineering all okay?

AF  

Yeah, look, if you've played with petrol, it's not a nice substance either. We use just a basic tech called twin skin, which is, instead of having one skin, you have two. Inside that second skin, between the first second skin is a detector that meets every possible safety requirement. If you have a leak — we haven't, but if you did — it's of course, blocked inside that second skin, and then an alarm and all the safety regulations. So we've had an incident free number of voyagers. Now we're the first, we're the pioneers, and we are demonstrating that ship wherever the IMO meets to say, this is the time to walk away from fossil fuels. And every time I see Chevron or Exxon or Shell in the negotiating room or in the presentation room, I say, 'Well, sir, what are you doing here?'

BW  

Well, they use a lot of ships. That's the thing, right? Shipping demand will go down once we stop using fossil fuels. 

AF  

What was that statement? 

BW  

Well, because a lot of the ships are moving fossil fuels, right? 

AF  

But we'll still be transporting green ammonia, but powered by green ammonia, so the pollu will go down.

BW  

It may be, that it may be some form of other, you know, there's going to be fuels that do not involve the burning of fossil fuels, I'm sure of that, for the long distance, right? Unless, of course...

AF  

There must be, otherwise your planet is toast.

BW  

Well in my world, I actually almost kind of hope that somebody commercializes a nuclear-powered ship, because that was done before, right? NS Savannah famously commercialized in the 70s. What I want is a level playing field where these things are gonna be costly at the start, they get cheaper.

AF  

 I do know this space. I started investing in small modular nuclear reactors. I envisaged, when Bill Gates and I were talking about it at the start of Fortescue, that I'd be able to put one of these onto a ship and sail it up to New Delhi. Plug in New Delhi. It has just been incredibly difficult. And of course, the way the world is going, I wouldn't want thousands and thousands of nuclear reactors floating around the oceans capable of being kidnapped or used for other purposes. But ammonia is able to be made free, from the sun, through these electrolysers I'm speaking to you about, which are unique, very small compared to what you know, and very cheap. Now, we're not launching these yet. We won't commercialize them until next yeat. But the age of very cheap energy is coming.

BW  

Well, look, that's what I want too. I think we all want that. I think we've just got to keep parallel options open until it becomes so obvious, like it has in the transport field, right? It was often, 'well, are we going to go for substitute fuels or are we going to electrify cars?' Now, like nobody thinks that. it's all electric cars, as China has proven. So while the option space is open, let's keep backing as many horses as possible to get to that outcome we want, which is affordable and safe and secure. 

AF  

Let's just switch back to the IMO. I mean, that is historical precedent by that industry. The industry to first walk away from consensus, which is the whole disaster of COP, everyone has to agree, which means Saudi Arabia can hijack it anytime they like. Because I said to the chief negotiator, 'when did you last have a large family dinner?' And he said, 'Oh, several months ago. Why?' I said, 'when you debated a topic with all the kids there, grandkids, do they all agree?' He said, 'Oh no, they didn't.' I said, 'Well, how the hell are you going to get 174 nations to agree, if you can't even get your kids and grandkids and aunts and uncles to agree on it?' It's 174 nations. If you go for consensus, you're destroying... Your actual reason for going for consensus is consensus, not politics. You want to destroy the process. So let's just be clear. Go for consensus, I'm going to go to print: You just want to destroy the process. Super majority is all you need go for that. 

BW  

We need this thinking inside these UN negotiations. Because, you know, if Australia gets to host a COP, please, this is a topic that unlocks so much. If we can get to a qualified voting majority away from this idea that it has to be consensus. And the truth is, the COP rules were never finalized, right? They're still hanging in a kind of unfinished state. Al Gore talks brilliantly about this. It would unlock so much more. 

AF  

We need to finish the rules of COP because there will be a time when no one will go because they'll just say, 'well, this is Saudi Arabia's plan, just to suck us in every four years.'

BW  

Yeah, Saudi Arabia, Russia, you could probably add the US now, sadly as well.

AF  

Yeah, you can. You can add them all in. But look, everyone who hasn't looked hard into global warming hasn't experienced lethal humidity. Now, in Saudi Arabia, they lost, I think, 1,300 pilgrims in Mecca through lethal humidity. They say, 'We all like heat. We're dressed in our white robes for heat.' I said, 'Yeah, but mate, you've got air conditioning for those people.' And there'll be plenty of people who don't — like billions — who cannot get to air conditioning. Humidity switches off your thermoregulation. You die in six hours, painful death. 

BW  

And can I actually thank you for the work you've done to popularize this. I think the fact that you're such a successful businessman and you're such a person who has got weight in a room, the fact that you're even raising this lethal humidity, I think, is fantastic, because it's hopefully helping people to wake up to the real risks.

AF  

Yeah, well what I hate about it most is that it's a deadly killer. What I like about it most is that it's a deadly killer. You know, Donald Trump cannot say, or the energy minister or secretary of the United States, cannot say, 'it's too early to say, the science is not settled.' Yeah, well why is that person dead? I mean, let's not muck around. That person's not sick. That person hasn't got a headache or not. You know, that person is dead. It's binary. Death is binary, and lethal humidity is binary and that happens inside election terms. It's not 2050, it's not even 2030, lethal humidity events are happening all over the world right now because of escalating humidity. Humidity rises seven to 10 times quicker than heat, and if we've had, like many scientists say, a half a percent rise. And I'm working really hard to endorse this, but I believe it to be true. As a scientist, we've had a near half percent rise in temperature in the last two years. That signal, Bryony, is the most dangerous signal to the existence of humanity we've ever had. You're counting World War Two... 

BW  

You're talking about a half degree rise in temperature? 

AF  

Yeah, we're trying to keep one and a half degrees. 150 years of industrialisation.

BW  

Yeah, 20 of the last 21 months have been over 1.5°C, that's the reality. 

AF  

So bottom line, half a degree in two years, Bryony. I am concerned.

BW  

That brings me onto another topic though, which is, can you see... Because as a politician, and we've done episodes on this, my sense is that politicians are going to want an answer. And short of inventing a time machine. 

AF  

An answer to what? 

BW  

An answer to stopping this runaway, these impacts that are piling up — bodies, maybe piling up in the streets, literally — and they're going to turn to geoengineering is my guess. Because they're going to want to be able to invest in something that feels like a solution in the near term. And I hope they'll carry on in the mitigation. I'm pretty certain that's unstoppable now because of the costs coming down. But there's going to be this moment where we say we just need to cool things down, especially because we've taken the sulfur out of our ship exhaust fumes and out of our coal burn, which is probably now meaning we're getting that big uptick of warming. What's your view on the geoengineering debate? 

AF  

Well, look, it'll be like challenging an elephant with a needle. I mean, we need to stop fossil fuel emissions, Bryony. I mean, all this crap — agricultural emissions, system emissions, geoengineering — if you want to save your planet, stop burning fossil fuel. There's every single technology available. You've argued the toss, should it be ammonia — you don't like the smell of it, that's fine, you think nuclear is pretty cool. 

BW  

The cost of it too...

AF  

Well, Bryony, but you're not giving us a shot. You're interviewing me through a rear-vision mirror. I'm a technologist, and I'm saying, 'yeah, the cost of green hydrogen is coming right down. If you refuse to accept that, then I can't argue with you.

BW  

No, no, it's not that. You're absolutely right, we don't know yet, but I think if we try to pretend there's one solution — that's what I'm taking issue with. And there was a period, I think, where hydrogen was touted as the answer to everything.

AF  

Yeah, but Bryony, you're going for small nuclear reactors. That's not a solution, Bryony. If it worked, great, I'd do it. I mean, for 20 years I've been trying to make it work, studying how to put them on ships, they didn't even work on ships. We can't even get them to work on land, we can't get them to work Bryony, if I order a nuclear reactor...

BW  

Let's see, there's a whole bunch of new ones coming through. I

AF  

Yeah but Bryony, we already have hydrogen. We know it can't be terrorized, we know it can't be weaponized. 

BW  

You know, it can blow up though, too, right? The Norwegian filling station that just had a little... 

AF  

Have you seen a nuclear bomb at all? 

BW  

Yeah, that's different. I'm not gonna go into that. Listen, this is, this is

AF  

I say Bryony, I think you're a bit U-203 glued. Why I like hydrogen is you can make it anywhere, all over the world, anytime you like.

BW  

Listen, I'm not anti-hydrogen. I think at a local... Because actually, there's a brilliant Australian innovation that came out of one of the universities, where for fertilizer production, you do it at the community scale. So five or six farms come together, and you're just using nitrogen from the air, water and electricity from a solar array, making fertilizer. 

AF  

Aren't they brilliant?

BW  

I just think it's been slightly overhyped. Is where I'm at.

AF  

Ammonia or hydrogen?

BW  

Hydrogen in general, yeah, and it's settling now.

AF  

Yeah, well look I think the good thing about it is that the tide's gone out. Fortescue was there first. It's there last. You know, when the motor vehicle industry got going, there were 300 companies everywhere. What are there now? A couple of dozen? In America, there were like 180, now there's four. So it's like that. So yes, there was this huge wave of enthusiasm, everyone then decided, 'God, it's hard,' and they all got out. Fortescue, bever.

BW  

I think because you are a commodity guy, you're a shipping guy, you're a physical... you know, like I can see that.

AF  

I'm a technologist.

BW  

And a technologist. And you're innovating into the space, and you're thinking big, and I like all of that. I think, if you're talking about Germany and whether you should be betting on cheap hydrogen arriving to run your economy? Probably not. 

AF  

I see, I see. Germany's special case.

BW  

Well just Germany's effect on Europe, right? Because Europe's going to spend quite a lot of money subsidizing something that honestly, we know electricity will work. And let's get those transmission lines in Germany, simple stuff first.

AF  

So we'r designing out a power system the size of Germany, which is 100% green, 24/7 base load. It's not nuclear. 

BW  

Oh, listen, don't get me wrong. People do like to characterize me, but I use it as an example. Let's be technologists, if we're technologists.

AF  

Then I have to look at real life experience. So France is going to spend $60 billion building 9.8 gigawatts of nuclear reactors. That is very expensive power, and the 14 old nuclear reactors they're taking down. Now, you've left this part out of the conversation, Bryony. Fourteen old ones they have to take down at an inestimable cost.

BW  

Well, you know why? Because we've asked them to return them to greenfield, which they do not need to do. 

AF  

Oh, we should leave them as smoking masses? 

BW  

No, they're not. You take the fuel rods out, they just need to be left alone. And there's so few of them.

AF  

I don't think we have one rule for the energy industry, and one rule for the mining industry, you've got to return it to green.

BW  

No, you don't. Why? Why?

AF  

Bryony, I thought you were an environmentalist?

BW  

I am an environmentalist, I'm pragmatic.

AF  

Then we don't have smoking ruins from nuclear reactors.

BW  

That's a really mischaracterization of these things. I mean, listen, I don't want to end on a...

AF  

Is it?

BW  

Yeah.

AF  

If you're not allowed to go near it forever, what do you call it, a block of flats? 

BW  

Let's go visit some nuclear power stations, and you can take me on your ship. But honestly, if we're technologists, let's embrace technology.

AF  

All I want is a safe fuel, which converts back to water, harms no one, and can be made anywhere. And I do think all the other talk is getting in the road. So you say, 'let's keep all options open.' But you've spent a lot of time speaking to a nuclear power guy, and your listeners are listening when there's actually a solution in front of our nose, which is a fuel which can be made anywhere infinitely, from wasted sun and wind. 

BW  

Yeah, but it's a feel that happens to be a greenhouse gas that likes to escape and that essentially is hard to run around. 

AF  

Why do you call it greenhouse gas? 

BW  

Well, it inhibits the breakdown of methane. 

AF  

That's rubbish. That is half the science that is put out by a group called EDF — Environmental Defense Fund — that is an acronym for petro state, they put that rubbish out. Actually, what happens is that it recrystallizes. The other half of that formula, which you haven't been given is that it recrystallizes back into existence. So I just want to say you've been fed a line here. It's a dangerous line. It's a half lie, it's called a bad one.

BW  

But you've got to admit that it likes to blow up, right? It's not a stable molecule

AF  

Have you seen a nuclear reactor? You're so funny Bryony. Or a petrol station. Have you seen an oil and gas tanker?

BW  

I do not want more...

AF  

Bryony, they don't have to blow. Okay, the agricultural sector uses ammonia. You've been consuming ammonia, and it is the safest fuel out there. I mean, I've only worked with ammonia for 30 years. So I kind of have a few clues here.

BW  

You do have a few clues. Okay, I'm talking about hydrogen here. I do not want hydrogen anywhere in my home, anywhere in my vehicle, and not in my street. 

AF  

But that's personal bias.

BW  

You said it, right. Fossil fuels blow up, things that are built to combust. 

AF  

So hydrogen is not a fossil fuel, Bryony. You can make it today, not from a fossil.

BW  

I hope you're right. But at the moment, where does all of our hydrogen come from? A fossil fuel.

AF  

So what, Bryony, where does everything come from? And this is the problem with this discussion. Because you're leaving all options open, and you're debating everything, these listeners are going to think, 'Well, God, what do I do? I listen to Bryony, I'm just lost now.' Whereas if they just listen to me, I'll say: Hang on. I've been through this for 30 years. I've looked at everything. I have spent fortunes on small nuclear reactors. I'm still spending a fortune right now on fusion. I do this, but I make sure that I have a bulletproof Plan B going all the time, and I concentrate on that bulletproof Plan B. That bulletproof Plan B is something you can make forever, and goes back to water, and that's hydrogen.

BW  

Well, I really hope your ships are running on hydrogen... ammonia. 

AF  

Which is just a hydrogen vector. 

BW  

Yeah, sure, but I also don't think I'm all of the above, in the sense that electricity, for me, is the backbone of this transition. And to the extent that we keep that in focus and we don't have politicians confused by people telling you that you should be putting hydrogen-ready boilers in your home. All good.

AF  

Look, a small while ago, Williams Advanced Engineering, a brain child of Sir Frank Williams, employed 200 engineers. They sold it to us. It now has 1,000 engineers. We are so proud of the success story of Williams in Oxford, and that is producing some of the best electrical technology on Earth, DC to DC batteries which can talk to each other, great batteries which can talk to you. This is the future.

BW  

Yes. Oh, good. All right, we're in consensus. You have to go. Thank you so much, Andrew.

AF  

Thank you so much, cheers.

BW  

It was a lot of fun.

BW  

So that was Andrew Forrest, Executive Chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group and co-founder of the Minderoo Foundation. Andrew's commitment to ushering in a world without fossil fuels is commendable, but quite how much green hydrogen that will involve remains to be seen. As availability of cheap, clean electrons grows, direct uses for them will increase as the most efficient and cost effective way of displacing fossil fuels. Where fuels remain necessary, in off grid situations, including long distance transport, there is a competition between those backing the various hues of hydrogen plus ammonia, and those backing biofuels. New policies like those adopted by the IMO will increase real world experience, and a winner will emerge. Given his clear commitment and proven ability to make things happen. I suspect Andrew will be right in the middle of that competition for many years to come. My thanks to you for listening, and also to Oscar Boyd, our producer, Jamie Oliver, our editor, and the team of people who make the Cleaning Up podcast possible. And, of course, our Leadership Circle supporters for enabling us to grow our increasingly international community. Please join us at the same time next week for another episode of Cleaning Up.

ML  

Cleaning Up is brought to you by members of our new Leadership Circle: Actis, Alcazar Energy, Davidson Kempner, EcoPragma Capital, EDP Portugal, Eurelectic, the Gilardini Foundation, KKR, National Grid, Octopus Energy, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SDCL and Wärtsilä. For more information on the Leadership Circle, please visit cleaningup.live, that’s cleaningup.live.