We're way overdue for guillotine day.
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Absolutely.
Australia stands to be the nation that can do so damned much towards pushing for a green future right now.
It's a mining powerhouse with access to the minerals needed for future green energy tech. It should be able to mine them more safely, wholesomely, and justly than pretty much any other nation. Mining stuff like lithium is an ugly business, but doing it in a country that has basic labor and environmental protection rules with the technology to do so at scale would be huge. If the Aussies really dedicated themselves to it, current issues with lithium or cobalt could be deflated substantially.
A rational "mining magnate" has everything to gain from a green future, and Australia has an opportunity to become very wealthy in the process -- provided it builds the industry, gets support from the government, and the rest of the world is buying. The IRA in the US means at least that market is very keen on friendsourced raw materials.
It should be able to mine them more safely, wholesomely, and justly than pretty much any other nation. Mining stuff like lithium is an ugly business, but doing it in a country that has basic labor and environmental protection rules with the technology to do so at scale would be huge.
Sorry but all I'm hearing is that it would be marginally more expensive, which means the market will either need to go where there aren't protections, or they'll have to gut protections here to accommodate the rights of the wealthy to make money by spilling other people's blood.
Capitalism got us into this mess, it won't get us out. It puts money above all else, so if you ask it to do anything good it will laugh at you and make a jerk off motion.
Australia is currently the worlds largest producer of lithium, so it can’t be that much more expensive. It would definitely make more sense to invest in scaleing up than their the coal mines.
Compared to all the other expenses, safety measures really are marginal costs, so it's kind of wild that bosses will cut them whenever possible.
But capitalists know that anything that constrains their abuse of workers gives them less power over them, and they can't accept that. Being a boss is really about domination above all else. The money is a proxy for that goal.
The owner class have to view the rest of us as inferior. When they're forced to acknowledge our humanity they respond with rage, because that sense of superiority justifies their position.
Without it there's no explanation for why their money allows them to do what they do. It's the floor they stand on, and if it's not there then they look down and see a yawning pit of horror. That separation between them and us both protects them from seeing how monstrous they really are, and it traps them.
It's not all bad news.
West Aus is getting big into renewable hydrogen. Basically using solar farms to crack hydrogen from sea water.
Last time I read up about it there were three new cracking facilities under development.
The whole process seems so magical to me as a non-science person, basically selling sun & sea water as a form of energy that for all intents and purposes has no waste products.
All I can find is this government PDF where there is no mention of investing in the renewables they plan as input.
I fear there is a scammy intention to build the infrastructure, promising green hydrogen then "in the meantime" just use gas to produce blue hydrogen.
From my other comment:
The largest in the South East of Western Australia is the Western Green Energy Hub which could generate 50GW of wind and solar energy and use that to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen every year. It will take several more years before a final investment decision is made and another decade to construct, but that's the nature of large scale projects.
Here's a good primer on electrolyzers, though it is very US (IRA)-oriented. Assuming you like a podcast (or reading a transcript of one).
I am extremely split about Forrest.
As far as mining magnates go, he is obviously a world apart from the likes of Rinehart and Palmer. He makes the right noises in many areas, and seems to be doing a lot of good things.
Ont he other hand, a number of his philanthropic projects spent a lot of money while going nowhere, his company FMG is involved in long-running disputes and controversies regarding mining without permission in Aboriginal land while destroying cultural and sacred sites, and he was the architect of the abominable cashless welfare card.
You can't be a "mining magnate" and a good person. That's just not possible.
As much as I agree with him, if the guillotine were to come out for the fossil fuel executives, what exactly makes him think he'll be spared?
what exactly makes him think he’ll be spared?
I don't really know anything about this but... the article says he acknowledges that his own companies are prominent greenhouse gas emitters, he is investing $6b to improve his companies, and that he has large investments in renewables as well.
IDK how true that is, but thats what it says.
He is investing in greenwashing such as his "green hydrogen".
Unfortunately it is not green. It is a scam.
You're going to have to explain how green hydrogen is a scam because I'm not going to listen to an obscure podcast to try to understand your point.
You need electricity to make hydrogen. Hydrogen maybe maybe could be part of the overall energy solution someday by providing a similar portable, fluid energy store as gasoline and diesel do now. But the technological challenges (like just getting the lightest gas in existence to stay in a container, for example) make it not the thing we should be investing large sums of money in right now.
We need to fix the underlying electricity generation problem before we can really even think about hydrogen as a fuel.
It’s worth noting that hydrogen is key to a large number of industrial processes, including the majority of metal and fertilizer production. While its use in fuel cells and small vehicles is rather silly, it’s about the only contender outside nuclear for ships. The conversion loses make it impractical for anything you can directly electrify, but that’s would only be a small fraction of a large industry.
Given this hydrogen is currently produced near entirely with natural gas and with several times the emissions of diesel, the idea of replacing that production with production powered by renewables is reasonable, especially since you need to overbuild solar and wind capacity so much to ensure constant power. Useing that spare capacity to make hydrogen, which doesn’t care about when it gets made, is also responsible.
We need green and pink hydrogen, the scam is coming up with more consumers of our currently minuscule supply.
You need electricity to make hydrogen.
Indeed. There's a number of huge solar farms in the development / approval phase in Western Australia.
The largest in the South East of Western Australia is the Western Green Energy Hub which could generate 50GW of wind and solar energy and use that to produce 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen every year. It will take several more years before a final investment decision is made and another decade to construct, but that's the nature of large scale projects.
I don't know how real the transportation problems actually are. Australia is already exporting liquid hydrogen. The industry doesn't seem concerned about it.
Nobody in Australia is producing green hydrogen. It would be nice if they started. None of his projects include renewable power to make the hydrogen. He just says he’ll buy it somewhere. That story is 2021, yet no renewable powered hydrogen production yet.
He isn't only investing in this. Look into Tatterang and its portfolio. He and his (ex) wife are among the biggest players in the domestic green energy space.
Yes, he has made billions digging up dirt and selling it to China. But he seems to recognise that he has enough money to get by and there might be a bit left over to try and make the world a bit better.
He and his (ex) wife are among the biggest players in the domestic green energy space.
and theeeeeeere it is.
If there's no shift to that space, there no money to be had.
This is one of his (note there are no WA operations)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CWP_Renewables
The other venture it seems he didn't want to invest as much in as his project partner Cannon-Brooks so the latter bought him out. At least that is how I quickly read it. It also was not in WA.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link
So it still looks like his WA Green Hydrogen investment is indeed a scam.
Last month we learned that quietly scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece of its plan to decarbonise the Fortescue's iron ore operations in WA.
I don't understand the point you are making. He's trialing the concept of using renewable energy to generate hydrogen that can later be used. What about this is a scam, exactly? That the process isn't profitable at the moment? I think that's the whole point, he is going to try and make the process more profitable and well, he can afford to run it at a loss for a while.
He's spending $3 Billion on this trial, great if he has that to experiment with. If it pans out for him, it might become a profitable venture. If it doesn't pan out, well at least he's trying to do something worthwhile with his money.
It looks like a cynical ploy to greenwash gas. Simple.
well at least he's trying to do something worthwhile with his money.
I wouldn't call accelerating the burning of gas "worthwhile".
And what exactly is wrong with burning Hydrogen?
I can understand if your concerns are to do with storing and transporting hydrogen. But what's your problem with burning it?
News last month shows how much bs Twiggy is spinning.
Fortescue has quietly scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece of its plan to decarbonise the company’s iron ore operations in Western Australia.
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/fortescue-dumps-vast-wa-wind-solar-farm-project-20231105-p5ehna
This has nothing to do with burning hydrogen. If you are just throwing it out there as another "Twiggy bad" thing, ok. I'm not really defending the guy.
You see a rich guy doing something good with his money and just shit all over him as "greenwashing" and "spin" for PR points. You may even be right. I don't know.
I see a rich guy doing something good with his money and want to encourage that behavoiur. More of this, please. A lot more. Spend money on pipedream green projects - maybe you'll get them streamlined enough to be sustainable! It sure beats spending billions on more iron ore mines. If every Billionaire started throwing their money at green projects, it can only be good for the planet.
G A S
Burning gas to produce the hydrogen.
I don't know how to make it any clearer.
You don't burn gas to produce hydrogen. You generate power with wind/solar, then run that power as an electrical current through water to separate out the oxygen and hydrogen atoms. No gas is burned.
This is not new technology: every nuclear submarine has been doing this to make oxygen since forever (not with renewable energy, of course).
You can use gas and other fossil fuels to produce hydrogen, but you can obviously use renewables too, amongst other methods. https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2021/may/green-blue-brown-hydrogen-explained
There has been a decent greenwashing campaign to try to disguise that a lot of hydrogen in the hydrogen mix is produced using fossil fuels. This is to try and enable greater use of hydrogen technologies over other solutions, eg EVs vs hydrogen cars, and keep money flowing to the fossil fuel barons. Unfortunately, we do need to be careful when we hear the blanket phrase 'hydrogen', rather than 'green hydrogen' specifically.
This article is from 2021 but I imagine the percentage of grey hydrogen in the hydrogen production mix is still up towards what is stated in the below quote. The context for the quote is in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics, Tokyo was using hydrogen buses.
Currently, around 95% of hydrogen production is what is called “grey”, including that being used at the Tokyo Olympics. It is made by reacting natural gas with high-temperature steam. This is the cheapest way to manufacture hydrogen but produces loads of CO2. In fact, it has been calculated that producing 1kg of hydrogen by this method will generate 9.3kg of CO2, which is actually more than the 9.1kg of CO2 produced by burning a gallon of gasoline, usually considered to have a similar energy value.
I keep demonstrating that there is no wind or solar to use in WA. That then leaves only fossil fuel sources like G A S.
G A S
Are you just trolling?
That is the greenwash you have either been sucked into or are trying to gaslight us with.
Twiggy has shown no intention of using renewables. The whole point for him is to use the stranded assets of the COVID gas led recovery (another scam).
When has anything ever been about WA? The very link you posted said he was doing his green hydrogen experiment in QLD.
I don't see any connection in this new link you've spewed up. It appears to be about a mothballed gas pipeline. You think it's a bad thing if he finds a use for this pipeline? Would you prefer that he build another pipeline? This pipeline appears to be in NSW, I don't get its relevance.
A well timed petroleum filled jet
Hard agree. But there won’t ever be any justice because there never is. Too many selfish cowards out there.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Australian mining magnate and climate campaigner Andrew Forrest has lashed out in an extraordinary outburst aimed at oil and gas supremos, saying their heads should be "put on spikes".
Tensions are increasing in Dubai over the nature of the final wording of the COP summit, with some pushing for a complete end to the use of coal, oil and gas, as others resist the demand.
Earlier this week, the head of US oil and gas behemoth Exxon said there had been too much focus on renewable energy and not enough attention paid to the role hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture and storage could play in cutting emissions.
Exxon, along with fellow American giant Chevron and the national oil companies of Saudi Arabia and COP28 host the UAE, have defied calls for a wind-down in fossil fuel use by investing heavily in new capacity and the acquisition of competitors.
According to Mr Forrest, attempts by the world's oil majors to hold up carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a solution to global warming were a red herring.
For all the consternation, many of the leading figures in attendance — including US Climate Envoy John Kerry and the head of the UN body that oversees COP — have backed the need for the industry to be involved.
The original article contains 979 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
not enough attention paid to the role hydrogen, biofuels and carbon capture and storage could play in cutting emissions
There has been a considerable amount of attention to the role they could play in cutting emissions, and the conclusion is that their role is to maintain the profits of the fossil fuel industry by distracting everyone from things that would actually cut emissions.
Hear, hear.
as far as rich guys go twiggy ain't the worst
News last month shows how much bs Twiggy is spinning.
Fortescue [Twiggy's company] has quietly scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece of its plan to decarbonise the company’s iron ore operations in Western Australia.
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/fortescue-dumps-vast-wa-wind-solar-farm-project-20231105-p5ehna
Basically Forrest keeps signing deals to make green hydrogen or green ammonia around Australia, and gets paid by the government . Then he backs out of the renewable power plants and pockets the cash. Same as 2021, only more blatant as time goes on without progress.
Ok, Robespierre.