Australian billionaire and Fortescue chair Andrew Forrest has pledged to produce and export enough green hydrogen to Germany to replace about a third of its gas imports from Russia, in an ambitious plan he said would require $50bn in investment.
The move to produce 5mn tonnes of hydrogen, part of a memorandum of understanding between Forrest’s Fortescue Metals and German energy group E.ON, would mean building from scratch enough renewable energy capacity to power a country roughly the size of the UK.
A solution would also have to be found to the problem of liquefying and shipping vast volumes of hydrogen from one side of the globe to another at a viable price.