“Liars:” Forrest and Turnbull take aim at fossil fuel hydrogen, set new green hydrogen target

Iron ore billionaire and green hydrogen investor Andrew Forrest and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have once again slammed the promoters of fossil fuel hydrogen projects, including describing them as “liars.”

The accusations came at the Green Hydrogen Global Assembly in Barcelona last week, at which Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries reportedly sent a team of more than 50, including Forrest – who led many sessions and hosted a reception – and Turnbull, an advisor to FFI.

Forrest has set an extraordinarily ambitious target of producing 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year.

But even those ambitions were put in the shade by the new global target of 100 million tonnes a year announced at the conference opening by Turnbull, who is the chair of the Green Hydrogen Organisation (GH2).

The world’s current production of green hydrogen amounts to just 100,000 tonnes a year, so this is a 100 fold increase in just years, a target that would require at least 1,400GW of new renewables capacity, according to Australia’s CWP Global.

Kobad Bhavnagri, from BloombergNEF, says such a target would require a doubling of capacity every year for nine years. But it is already happening, hydrogen electrolyser manufacturing capacity is expected to jump 20-fold to 37GW per year by 2024.

Bhavnagri also said “blue hydrogen”, created from gas, could become a “white elephant” within five years. “Gas would need to be sold at negative cost to make it cost competitive with green,” he said.

Right now, blue hydrogen is exactly where most government funding – including in Australia – is going, to what is dubiously also called “clean hydrogen”.

Essentially, it is fossil fuelled hydrogen that claims emissions abatement through carbon capture and storage. Forrest and Turnbull say it is nonsense.

“Those people are lying to the public, to the communities, to the global public,” Forrest told the conference, according to the Recharge publication.

“They are prepared to lie to their own shareholders, lie to their own stakeholders, those people who want to keep greenwashing the world as it slowly cooks in temperature.

“We will march against the hideous propaganda which the fossil-fuel sector is still putting out.”

In another session, Forrest said: “If something fails 19 out of 20 times, then that statistically it is a complete failure. It cannot in any way be fudged as a success.”

Forrest’s comments came just days before the Saturday election, which swept from power the Coalition government of Scott Morrison, which has been a major backer of fossil fuel hydrogen projects, and of CCS.

Turnbull, told Recharge that he “wouldn’t put a nickel” into blue hydrogen, and said the pursuit of CCS was madness.

“How many times do you have to be disappointed by carbon capture and storage?” Turnbull told Recharge. “Isn’t it the definition of madness to keep on doing the same thing, expecting a different result?”

Earlier, Turnbull told the conference that he had high hopes for CCS when he was environment minister under John Howard more than 15 years ago.

“We had high hopes for CCS and billions have been spent on it,” he said in his opening speech. “But regrettably it has very rarely worked. That’s a fact.

“Now another fact is that we know we have the tools to make abundant green hydrogen today. The biggest cost input is renewable electricity and the cost of that is continuing to decline.”

Interestingly, Turnbull also suggested green hydrogen will not need to be subsidised beyond initial support that can kick-start the industry.

The European Commission last week announced its plans to support the roll out of green hydrogen through support mechanisms such as “contracts for difference”, which have been used successfully in Europe, and in Australia.

“There is an argument I think in favour of government providing support initially to really to get the business community, in particular, the financial community, comfortable with the risk … for the first generation of projects,” Turnbull told Recharge.

“And then, after that, people will have worked out what the [best] financial model is.”