Forrest promises to convert first ship to green ammonia within a year

It took his team just over three months days to create the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell haul truck , and now green energy evangelist and billionaire Andrew Forrest is promising to put a green ship to sea within the next year, powered only by green ammonia.

Forrest – in an address to “transport day” at the Glasgow climate conference – also pledged to convert Fortescue Metals’ entire fleet of 100 ships to green ammonia within a decade and for global shipping industry to adopt a net zero target for 2040.

The first ship to be converted will be the 75-metre supply ship, the MMA Leveque, to run on green ammonia, which Forrests expects to be completed within 12 months.

“This is just the first,”he said in an interview. “We have about 100 ships on the water, and we’ll be converting all our own ships over to green ammonia at the earliest possible opportunity, well within this decade.

“This vessel will show the shipping industry the power of a vessel fuelled by green ammonia in real world conditions.”

The MMA Leveque is less than a hundredth the size of some of the world’s largest bulk commodity carriers – but it marks nevertheless an important first step.

Forrest, who has made a string of green hydrogen announcements at Glasgow and over the preceding weeks, aims to convert Fortescue Metal’s entire fleet of trucks, locomotives, and ships to green fuels.

“We invented the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell haul truck in three and a half months. You can come over and drive it around,” Forrest said in a webinar last month to announce a deal to build a 2GW hydrogen electrolyser factory in Australia.

“At the same time my team were inventing that truck and changing the drive engines of these huge trucks to hydrogen fuel cells, they were also putting green ammonia into a ship’s engine and green ammonia into our train engines and seeing them run successfully up to nearly 100% green ammonia.

“You use green ammonia when you want slow revolutions, like the huge ships which go all over the world. They run between 60 and 100 revolutions per minute. Really slow, perfect for zero-pollution ammonia. The whole shipping world has to switch to it.”

Forrest’s push to become a leading green hydrogen player is expected to cost more than $US100 billion, or around $A135 billion, and Forrest says it is vital to the company’s future.

“Not doing it will actually have a significant detriment on our profitability,” he told the FMG annual general meeting on Tuesday.

Fortescue Metals Group has set itself a carbon neutrality target of 2030 for its Scope 1 and 2 emissions and, just last month expanded its target to include net zero for its Scope 3 emissions by 2040.

The company will also aim to achieve a 50% reduction in the emissions intensity of the shipping of its ores by 2030 as well as cut emissions from its steel making by 7.5% by 2030 from current levels, and by 100% by 2040.