An interesting piece in the AFR today offers some of an opposing view of the FMG going green lovefest - note I'm actually a believer in FMG however it's always good to hear an opposing view...
https://www.afr.com/rear-window/andrew-forrest-mike-cannon-brookes-on-epic-free-ride-20211102-p595e6
It's behind the paywall so I'll include some highlights here...
Andrew Forrest is in Glasgow saving the world while, next door, the world’s leaders have gathered for COP26.
The mining billionaire has emitted more carbon from his own gob in the past three weeks than Fortescue’s Solomon hub pumps out in a year, even announcing a “multibillion-pound” output deal to supply a fuel that has yet to be produced at scale. At least when he vowed to become the third force in iron ore, iron ore actually existed.
The wilful credulity of the entire Australian media in this blaze of headlines is contemptible. Not a single word to slide off Forrest’s forked tongue has been treated with any scepticism or afforded any scrutiny. Right now, if he unveiled his own excrement on a plate, my colleagues would call it eye fillet.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has not returned to the bar but has plainly reverted to advocacy on retainer. Hosting a reception in London last week in his capacity as chairman of Fortescue Metals subsidiary Fortescue Future Industries, Turnbull lamented government subsidies “as a means to keep on doing what they have been doing, which is burning fossil fuels”.
In financial 2021, Fortescue consumed 700 million litres of diesel fuel, up 9 per cent on 2020, and for this disservice to the atmosphere Fortescue received $300 million in the Australian government’s Fuel Tax Credit for Heavy Diesel Vehicles. When, then, will Fortescue cease accepting this fossil fuel subsidy?
In financial 2021, Fortescue cracked 2 million tonnes of Scope 1 carbon emissions, up 8 per cent on 2020. Fortescue’s direct emissions are well ahead of those generated by Centennial Coal and Whitehaven Coal.
It is a relevant fact, as Forrest is feted in the Scottish Lowlands, that Fortescue’s emissions and fossil fuel consumption are both rising. This is the gulf between what he says and what he does.
Forrest’s ambitions for the future are laudable, yet his company declines to spend a single dollar ameliorating the massive environmental damage it is causing today. “We think offsets will become less and less popular as people realise how very unreliable they are,” he said in September. It is certainly true that junk offsets are ubiquitous, but carbon offsets are like any other product in that you get what you pay for.
Forrest delivered a Boyer lecture in January entitled “Confessions of a Carbon Emitter”. Confessing to a crime does not buy you permission to keep offending.
