Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue unloads green deal blitz to supply mammoth Pilbara decarb undertaking

Fortescue lieutenant Dino Otranto is banking on an onslaught of Chinese renewable deals to allay the fears of the miner’s real-zero “sceptics”, as Andrew Forrest caps off a whirlwind week of climate crusading.

Solar, battery and wind turbine deals with BYD, LONGi and Envision, a new supply deal for battery-powered trucks with XCMG, and the purchase of a Spanish wind turbine builder called Nabrawind, were all announced by the listed miner on Friday.

Finer details of the individual heads of agreements however, such as pricing and specifics of the deliverables, were light-on and have been kept behind a veil of commercial confidence.

The miner has significantly scaled back its plans to export green hydrogen and abandoned two major projects in Queensland and Arizona but still plans to decarbonise its sprawling Pilbara iron ore empire by 2030.

Fortescue said the outflows for the new renewable deals will fall within Fortescue’s $US900m to $US1.2 billion decarbonisation budget range for 2026.

“What we’re learning is there is no one silver bullet,” chief executive Dino Otranto told The West Australian. “These announcements should give some of our sceptics a little bit more confidence.”

Grand plans for commercial scale green hydrogen projects by the end of the decade have been ditched and will “only progress when they are economically viable and the market is ready,” investors were told in August.

But not all hydrogen hopes have faded, with Woodside Energy on Thursday inking a memorandum of understanding with a view to potentially selling the liquid fuel to two Japanese customers.

Woodside has proposed that carbon offsets and carbon capture would be used to cancel out emissions from the hydrogen separating process at its planned H2Perth project.

Despite the companies having a chequered history between them — Mr Forrest once said energy bosses should have their heads “put up on spikes” — Fortescue’s Mr Otranto held a positive view of the development from Woodside.

“Woodside, who we have a complete disagreement (with) around the use of gas and our energy transition aspirations, you can put all that aside, and what we are agreeing on is the economics of renewable energy makes sense.”

Mr Forrest was in New York this week and took aim at US President Donald Trump for “propagating a complete myth that global warming isn’t happening”.

“I feel real pain when I hear your President saying global warming’s a great big con… I happen to own several million acres of land in Australia, come and see what’s happening… come and dive on these reefs which were the most beautiful environments on earth,” he told a New York Times conference.

Back in WA, the miner is awaiting environmental approval to build 200 wind turbines in the Pilbara with an installed capacity of 2.1 gigawatts, one of the largest wind farms in the country if delivered.

Mr Ontranto was encouraged by the planned introduction of Premier Roger Cook’s new State Development Bill, which promises to speed up the approvals process of priority energy and defence projects.

Replacing diesel and gas-fired power with energy from the wind farm would reduce Fortescue’s emissions by “at least 1.5 million tonnes of CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalent) annually”, an application said, taking a sizeable chunk out of the miner’s 2.55mt emissions output in 2023.

Fortescue’s plan is to speed up the build by using a “self-lifting” tower design developed by Nabrawind.

“You don’t need to haul around these huge structures anymore, you can import smaller stick build beams that can come off a ship and get trucked to site without the logistical impact that we’ve seen with wind turbines,” Mr Otranto said.

Replacing diesel trucks – responsible for about 51 per cent of yearly scope 1 emissions - with battery-powered ones through Liebherr and new partner XCMG are also part of the decarb mission.

A deal with XCMG will supply up to half of Fortescue’s future fleet of 300 to 400 zero-emissions 240-tonne haul trucks, with phased deliveries planned from 2028 to 2030.