Fortescue drops massive Uaroo renewable hub as it reorganises Pilbara energy plans

Fortescue has stepped back from its ambitious 5.4 gigawatt (GW) Uaroo Renewable Energy Hub but still plans to build something on the site.

The company dropped its planning approval application last month for the project, which was supposed to host a multi-gigawatt solar farm, 340 wind turbines and huge amounts of battery storage across the Andrew and Nicola Forrest-owned Uaroo and Emu Creek cattle stations.

But a spokesperson for the company says Fortescue’s pipeline still includes some kind of development at Uaroo.

The original plans for the hub was for a wind and solar park unlike anything Western Australia had seen before, to be built by Andrew Forrest’s newly formed Fortescue Future Industries, and through its Pilbara Energy subsidiary. 

When it was revealed in February 2022, the proposed 3.33 GW of solar was almost 2.5 times more than the installed capacity of the state’s rooftop solar, and the 340 wind turbines would generate nine times more than the state’s largest wind farm, Yandin. 

A 9.1 gigawatt hour (GWh) battery would support the whole. Australia’s largest battery to be approved to date is 2.4 GWh, the Equis Australia battery in Victoria in October. 

Still figuring out the energy mix

Fortescue expects to need 2-3GW of renewable energy and battery storage in order to get fossil fuels out of the energy mix at the company’s iron ore operations in the Pilbara, but it doesn’t yet know exactly what that combination will look like. 

“The precise mix of wind and solar is still open and will depend on commercial and approval developments,” the spokesman said. 

Fortescue is currently building a 100 megawatt (MW) solar farm at North Star Junction, near Iron Bridge, which is expected to be operational by the second half of 2024. It will provide up to 30 per cent of Fortescue’s Pilbara daytime stationary energy needs.

Forrest bought the Emu Creek property last year via the couple’s Harvest Road farming company. It was supposed to play host to a wind and solar farm covering 10,000 hectares and connect into Fortescue’s Eliwana mining hub using a 225km transmission line.

Fortescue chief executive Dino Otranto told the AFR the Uaroo hub was to support the company’s ammonia export ambitions rather than the company’s decarbonisation strategy. 

Although when the plans were originally released in early 2022, then Fortescue Future Industries CEO Julie Shuttleworth said it supported the zero-emissions target. The inferred cost was around $10 billion.

4GW for Pilbara energy

In October, just two days after it cancelled the Uaroo hub, Fortescue told analysts that it plans to build 1 GW of solar, 1 GW of wind and 4 GW of battery storage in the Pilbara to end its reliance on fossil fuels for transport and electricity.

Alinta has built one 60 MW solar farm to date at Chichester by Alinta, but plans for another 150MW of solar and two small battery projects are well advanced. The plans also include 750kms of transmission lines.

Fortescue says it will start building the battery storage from 2026 and wind from 2027, although the locations of these projects are still up in the air.