I have to admit, the last place I thought I’d hear major announcements for carbon-neutral goals is in the iron ore mining industry. But Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group has set an aggressive target.
The world’s fourth-largest iron ore miner had already put a carbon neutral target in place for 2040, but they have brought this forward to a much more aggressive 2030.
It looks like the primary solution for this industry is hydrogen, and Yahoo News has reported why.
“Green hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel made by using renewable power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is increasingly promoted as a way to decarbonise emissions-intensive heavy industry and long haul transport.”
Fortescue has a project to produce enough green hydrogen to replace 1 billion liters of diesel fuel each year. This is mainly going to help switch heavy machinery and vehicles to clean energy sources.
It gets a bit more complicated when it comes to metallurgical furnaces, but one of the company’s chairman, Andrew Forrest, believes there won’t be any coal-fired furnaces left in the next few decades.
