Before he turned to renewable energy,Dr Forrest updated shareholders on the Minderoo Foundation he set up 10 years ago with his wife Nicola that is funded with $2.5 billion of their Fortescue dividends.
“We’re tackling some of the most challenging problems on earth like modern slavery,indigenous inequality,community bushfire and flood resilience,” Dr Forrest said.
Another Minderoo focus is plastic pollution “that is genocidal to wildlife and over time in a degraded form,behaving much like asbestos in our own bodies.”
Dr Forrest is clear when he does not like something.
“There can be no doubt,ladies and gentlemen,that the plastification of our oceans,and its equally malicious twin,fossil fuel-generated global warming are amongst the greatest threats to ever confront our planet.”
Unlike plastic,Dr Forrest will not tackle climate change with philanthropy but use “the industrial might of commerce” via Fortescue green energy subsidiary Fortescue Future Industries.
“We set out to test the hypothesis that there was enough renewable energy to efficiently and completely replace the fossil fuel sector,” Dr Forrest said.
“We’re scoping large scale renewable energy and hydrogen projects in the USA,Canada,Africa,Central Asia,Europe,Latin America,the Middle East,Asia and Australia.
“In other words,everywhere.”
Financing that ambition has worried some but not Dr Forrest.
“Don’t doubt a second that these investors are there,they are,” he said.
“There’s over $US130 trillion of investment announced in COP26 in Glasgow alone.”
FFI announced in October it would make the electrolysers required to extract hydrogen in Gladstone. Dr Forrest described electrolyser manufacturing as “primitive until we made the decision to automate it.”
A feature of FFI’s second year will be how well it executes its decisions.
Unlike recent quarterly results where FMG was peppered with questions from investment analysts about its energy arm,there was little grilling on Tuesday from retail shareholders.
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Australian Shareholders Association representative Len Roy said Fortescue’s allocation of ten per cent of its profit to clean energy was commendable,and only requested that the activities of the new venture were reported to the same detail as mining.
“We acknowledge the global sustainability journey requires extensive investment in technologies,” Mr Roy said.
Hardly the fireworks many expected at the AGM.
Dr Forrest used a Tom Petty song in a video he showed shareholders. The song concludes:“Working on a mystery,going wherever it leads,I’m running down a dream.”
Dr Forrest is dreaming about green energy,not red rocks,and for now,FMG shareholders are along for the ride.
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