Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have formed an international body to promote the use of green hydrogen around the world called Green Hydrogen Organisation.

Green Hydrogen Organisation’s (GH2O) mission is to promote the sustainable production and use of green hydrogen, mitigate climate change and improve access to reliable, clean energy.

Many large mines are already transitioning to renewable power and turning to electro-mobility. Hydrogen is the next frontier.

“We believe that green hydrogen, produced through the electrolysis of water using renewable energy, is a fundamentally different technology to hydrogen made from gas and coal. Green hydrogen needs its own organisation to represent it at a global level. Green hydrogen’s growth is dependent on a fundamentally different set of policy settings and investment decisions than fossil fuel hydrogen. Green hydrogen is a genuine, long term solution to climate change, and should be the focus of investors and governments looking to support a permanent transition to hydrogen fuels,” the group stated.

The group’s initiatives include:

• The Green Hydrogen Charter – Bringing together governments and other stakeholders to share good practices in enabling rapid private sector growth in producing and using green hydrogen based on renewable energy. This effort is led by GH2O international chairman and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
  
  
• The Green Hydrogen Development Compact – Bringing together developing country governments, international finance institutions and other development actors in building, sharing and promoting development policies to enable a rapid acceleration in the production and use of sustainable green hydrogen. This is essential in order to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
  
  
• The Green Hydrogen CEO Roundtable – The global business leadership forum where companies work together to ensure that green hydrogen grows quickly and can compete fairly.
  
  
• GH2O Certification and Standards – To support the rapid development of sound standards for renewable green hydrogen, making sure that “green is green,” embraces best practice ESG principles, and ensures that definitions and standards don’t favour low carbon emissions hydrogen over hydrogen produced with no emissions.

 

Without green hydrogen, industries like steel (6% of global emissions) and cement (8% of global emissions) are likely to remain major carbon emitters well into the future. Forrest’s Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) subsidiary plans to produce 15 million tonnes of renewable green hydrogen per year by 2030. The good news is, some analysts predict that by 2050 green hydrogen could supply 25% of the world’s energy.

 

 

Mark S. Kuhar, editor

[email protected]

(330) 722‐4081

Twitter: @editormarkkuhar