There aren’t many Australian founders with as much self-belief as Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest.
Having built the world’s fourth-largest iron ore company, some of it is not ill-placed. But after five long years, the mining magnate seems to have walked back his second one-in-a-million moonshot, this time on green hydrogen.
Announcing 700 job cuts last night and scrapping Fortescue's target of producing 15 million tonnes of the fuel by 2030, the decision marks a major strategic shift away from the speculative form of energy and towards renewables and the company’s core mining business.
While Twiggy isn’t giving up on hydrogen altogether, he has acknowledged it needs to get cheaper to make if the economics are to ever stack up — even with billions in new government subsidies.
