Fortescue’nin karbonsuzlaştırma planı ve Ukrayna’ya yönelik destek: Forrest’in küresel finans/ madencilik vizyonu

Kısaca

Fortescue, 222 milyon ton yıllık demir cevheri üretiyor ve karbonsuzlaştırma için hızlı plan açıklıyor; hedef 2030 Forrest, Ukrayna’ya destek için milyonlarca dolar bağışlıyor ve Meta’ya karşı sürdürdüğü davaları sürdürüyor Piyasa, Fortescue’nin rekabet avantajını ve enerji geçişindeki liderliğini yakından izliyor

Ana mesele

Fortescue, 2030 hedefiyle fosil yakıt bağımlılığını azaltmayı ve Ukrayna’ya destek paketlerini hızlandırmayı hedefliyor

Ne değişti?

Forrest’in karbonsuzlaştırma girişimleriyle şirketin rekabet avantajı artırabilir; Ukrayna için finansal katkı yeni bir boyut katıyor

Beni nasıl etkiler?

Okuyucuya küresel madencilik ve enerji geçişi açısından net bir yön gösteriyor

Ne oldu?

Fortescue, karbonsuzlaştırma planı ve Ukrayna’ya destek konularını sürdürüyor

Neden şimdi?

Enerji geçişi baskısı ve Ukrayna savaşının uzaması yatırım kararlarını etkiliyor

Neden önemli?

Şirketin maliyet yapısı, yatırımcı güveni ve rekabet konumunu şekillendiriyor

Kimler etkileniyor?

• Yatırımcılar
• Tedarik zinciri ortakları
• Regülatörler
• Rekabet halinde bulunan diğer madencilik devleri

Sektör ve piyasa etkisi

Madencilik ve enerji geçişine bağlı hisse senedi ve borçlanma piyasalarında volatilite artabilir

Riskler

• Karbon vergileri ve regülasyon baskıları
• Jeopolitik riskler
• Yatırım geri dönüş süresinin uzaması

Takip edilmesi gerekenler

• 2030 hedefinin uygulanabilirliği
• Ukrayna’ya destek paketinin büyüklüğü ve esnekliği
• Şirketin finansal sonuçları ve borç düzeyi

Haberin tamamı

By Andrew Forrest’s account, the childhood bullying he suffered at the hands of bigger kids explains a lot about how his life has turned out. Growing up on a remote cattle ranch in Western Australia, “I was a very skinny kid. I got the nickname ‘Twiggy,’ ” Forrest says in a hotel in London. “I used to have to stand up to bullies.”

Forrest never stopped fighting powerful forces. Now 64, the executive chairman of $17 billion iron ore giant Fortescue is intent on upturning age-old practices in the heavily polluting $3 trillion mining industry. He’s waged a five-year legal fight against Meta over deepfake ads that used his image to promote a crypto scam and other sham investments on Facebook. When Russia invaded its far smaller neighbor in February 2022, igniting Europe’s deadliest war in generations, he was galvanized. He has worn Ukraine’s flag pin ever since, and he’s plowing tens of millions of dollars into supporting Ukraine through years of war. Nor did he hold back when the White House slammed one of his impassioned environmental speeches last January as “vague, radical left-wing climate goals.” Forrest’s response: “I am entitled to say whatever I damn well wish.”

So he has. In the process, Twiggy Forrest, as many Australians call him, has gained notoriety far beyond his native country—no small feat for a kid from the outback. His 36.7% stake in Fortescue, which he founded in 2003, has made him one of the 10 richest people in Australia, worth an estimated $11.35 billion.

Maybe more impressive, Forrest’s reputation is growing not because of his astronomical riches but rather his audacious—some say fantastical—ambition to transform Fortescue’s mines, which produce nearly 222 million tons of iron ore a year, by virtually eliminating the use of fossil fuels and setting a lightning-fast 2030 deadline to do so.

It’s a high-stakes gambit. If Forrest pulls off his green strategy, he could cement his role as a trailblazer in an epoch-defining issue, distinguishing his company from the two biggest mining titans, BHP and Rio Tinto—both more than a century older than Fortescue, and both of which have reined in their climate targets in recent years. What’s more, Forrest’s determination comes as many global corporations have backed away from their “net-zero” goals, limiting their ambitions amid hostility to the issue from the Trump administration.

Forrest, who calls his plan “Real Zero,” dismisses many businesses’ green strategies as smoke-and-mirror schemes that rely on offsets and avoid tackling the full extent of climate change. He is shooting for much more significant results, he says.

If he falls short, it could well confirm other companies’ claims that going green and being profitable are simply not compatible. If Forrest succeeds, however, his experiment could ripple across other industries. He, for one, is convinced he will prove his point in the end. “If we could stand up removing all fossil fuels, and if we could do that and maintain our position, then that becomes the hallmark,” he says. “Everything else is going to be easier than mining. Everyone else has no excuse.”

Forrest’s business career

Forrest’s business career has been a wild ride. He was a Harley-Davidson-riding stockbroker in Sydney in the 1980s, and in 1995 founded the mining company Anaconda Nickel before being pushed out of the job in 2002 amid financial strains on the business.

That barely slowed him down. Forrest founded Fortescue in 2003, determined to break BHP and Rio Tinto’s grip on iron ore. His timing was flawless: He launched the company just as China was scrambling for iron ore to construct the skyscrapers, cars, factories, and machines that would make up the world’s biggest building boom. Investors poured in, even before Fortescue had shipped a single ton. After borrowing heavily in the 2010s to build its port and rail networks, Fortescue rode the commodity upswing. In August, it reported a 9% increase in revenues for the year ending in July. (Its earnings are still less than a third of BHP’s and Rio Tinto’s.)

During Fortescue’s early years, the environmental toll of gouging metals from the earth was all but an afterthought. Forrest says he was pushed into thinking about climate change in the 2010s by his daughter Sophia, who was anxious about the planet’s future. He opted for a two-pronged approach: Having Fortescue drastically cut its oil and gas use on the mines and research how to generate green hydrogen , a renewable fuel that (unlike blue hydrogen) doesn’t rely on burning fossil fuels. In his mind, Fortescue needed a loftier goal than capturing carbon—an idea pushed by Big Oil as a way to cut their emissions but that Forrest dismisses as a feel-good notion cooked up by “super lazy politicians.” Instead, “we said, ‘Let’s see if we can invent another fuel, made from green energy sources,’ ” he recalls.

Then came the biggest crisis of Forrest’s life. In 2015, he fell into a gorge while hiking in Western Australia, breaking his right leg so severely he wasn’t sure he would walk again. Confined to a wheelchair for months, he began studying climate change’s threat to ocean life. “I came out of that and thought, ‘Whoa, this is serious,’ ” he says. “We started saying, ‘How can we make an example out of ourselves?’ No point in preaching to anyone else if we can’t do it ourselves.” He announced Fortescue’s transformation plan in 2022.

A green revolution in the Pilbara

The harsh, remote, red-earth terrain in Western Australia known as the Pilbara is not an obvious place to launch a green revolution. Barely 65,000 people live in the vast, bone-dry region about the size of Spain. Temperatures regularly hit 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Tropical cyclones whip through the area. Aboriginal groups have pushed back against firms operating there. The Yindjibarndi have accused Fortescue of exploiting their land and damaging cultural sites. (Fortescue says it has awarded $362.7 million in contracts to the group’s businesses since 2011.)

Haberin tamamı için kaynak bağlantısını ziyaret edin.

Kaynaklar

• Fortune