OPINION
“Green hydrogen” is such an obviously ludicrous idea it beggars belief anyone could be seriously bamboozled by it for a second. Least of all a supposedly hard-headed business leader. But an apparently bottomless honeypot of taxpayer’s money can buy a lot of bamboozlement.
But only so much, it appears.
Billionaire Andrew Forrest has abandoned ambitious green hydrogen targets in a major business backdown that threatens the Albanese government’s pledge for the energy source to help drive the nation’s transition to net-zero emissions by 2050 […]
The concession that Fortescue cannot meet its green-hydrogen targets represents a major retreat by Dr Forrest, who only a few years ago was boasting that the company’s green-energy ambitions would one day make it bigger than Saudi energy giant Aramco.
Sooner or later, reality smacks climate cultism in the face. This is just the latest in a series of failures of big-talking “renewable” projects, from former “climate commissioner” Tim Flannery’s failed geothermal, to Obama flagship Solyndra.
For Fortescue to abandon its ambitions to produce 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030, and make similarly deep cuts to its workforce, represents a humiliating backdown.
Not because the company has abandoned the goal in the face of reality.
But because Dr Forrest and his leadership team spent the past three years waving away genuine concerns about the plans that were being expressed by investors, market analysts, hydrogen and energy experts, and even the company’s own staff – many of whom left in frustration well ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.
Well, cults tend to be like that.
The only thing these boondoggles ever achieve is burning billions of other people’s money.
The move also punches a hole in Labor’s emissions transition plan, with the government providing $8bn in investment and support for hydrogen production as part of a push for Australia to become a key player in global efforts to achieve net zero.
This is the bigger story: Labor’s doomed-to-fail “Net Zero” lunacy. “Green hydrogen” was a centrepiece of that mad plan. Forrest has finally conceded what anyone with half a brain and a calculator could see from the start: hydrogen is expensive and wasteful. But ‘expensive and wasteful’ is Net Zero’s middle name.
Anyone harbouring even the faintest hope that Labor will learn its lesson from this debacle isn’t reckoning with the depth of delusion pervading the Climate Cult.
Billions of public subsidy dollars are being directed towards getting hydrogen production down to a reasonable price. In the Albanese government’s mind, it is the nation’s route to being a renewable energy superpower.
In the latest sign of what hydrogen means for the federal government, it has put forward draft plans that, unlike Joe Biden’s hydrogen subsidy scheme, will allow green hydrogen producers to claim a credit for hydrogen that is actually made with fossil fuels […]
Without hydrogen, Labor’s renewables-only transition is left looking for a reliable long-term fuel that can firm the grid when wind and solar fail to produce.
We already have them: coal, gas, and nuclear. All three, on the UN’s own definition, are classed as “renewables”. Of the three, nuclear is “carbon free”.
Yet Labor and the Greens remain adamantly opposed.
That’s a cult for you.