Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest touts the raft of announcements made in Queensland and NSW this week:On Saturday, I announced the one billion build of the world’s largest green electrolyser facility here. It will double the supply, not in India, not in China, not in Europe, but in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia. The starter gun has been fired on the journey, bringing manufacturing at home roaring back, particularly to regional Australia. Up to this point, practically all our green energy – think wind turbines, think solar panels – have, like our diesel and like our oil, been imported.
But I want countries, including most of all ours, to take control of their own economic and energy sovereignty. On top of that the great state of Queensland, where Fortescue Future Industries, or FFI, is making our first major manufacturing investment, New South Wales is also to receive the world’s first green hydrogen energy import and export terminal, as well as a dual fuel power station, which will transition from a blend of green hydrogen and LNG to 100% green hydrogen as soon as GH2 supply increases.
Let’s clear that up – green hydrogen. We hear a lot about so-called “clean hydrogen”. It’s a sound bite covering the fact it’s made from carbon-emitting fossil fuel. It has carbon all through its supply chain. Sure, it’s clean once it’s hydrogen, but to get it there, it’s dirty. Very dirty, with heaps of carbon dioxide emitted in the process. But there is that other dirty little secret – the gas, which is invisible to the naked eye, but at least 80 times more dangerous as a global warming agent than even carbon dioxide. Methane. The basis of natural gas, which is not adequately, nor independently, measured as fugitive emissions in fossil fuel.
This sector is better off simply burning the coal, burning the oil, burning the gas, than they are in hiding the emissions through turning it into blue-grey hydrogen, and having an otherwise astute energy minister, Angus Taylor, misled into selling it as “clean”.
Think “clean coal”. Think “clean hydrogen”. Think “cancer-free tobacco”. It all adds up to the same thing – misleading sound bites put out by industries wishing to continue a duplicitous social licence to operate. And Australia has thousands of times, thousands of times more renewable energy than fossil fuel has reserves. So, let’s keep fossil fuel going but only as long as we need to, and let’s do everything we need to switch to a green future.
I see affordability increasing. I see affordability to light up your homes and highways, power our factories and farms, our schools, tech schools and universities, all over Australia. And I see it all being done while growing our economy, and while leaving your environment green and kind for your kids and grandkids. This is hard-edged economic choice, but it’s also social and environmental rationalism.
To the increasingly rare, thankfully, historical politicians fear-mongering against choice, pretending to represent us, I just want to remind you – it’s taken 50 years for fossil fuel to get the power bills down, and, mate, they’re still going up. In five years, not 50, you’ve seen the cost of green hydrogen halve ... there are none so blind, as those who will not see.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2021/oct/14/australia-covid-new-south-wales-victoria-act-lockdown-coronavirus-andrews-perrottet-morrison-vaccine-sydney-melbourne?page=with:block-616794038f08880f7f055a19#liveblog-navigation
