Fortescue targets ‘diesel elimination’ in ambitious, fast-tracked Pilbara green power grid plan

Fortescue says it is targeting “diesel elimination” under ambitious plans to bring forward a green energy grid to power its enormous Pilbara operations by years. The Andrew Forrest-chaired iron ore giant is touting the project as a world-first integrated system “dedicated to eliminating fossil fuels from large-scale industry”, at a size it believes is comparable to a city. The primary goal is to sever dependence on diesel, which is now in short supply because of the Middle East conflict, causing extreme price volatility. In a statement on Friday, Mr Forrest said the miner’s decision in 2022 to convert its entire Australian operations to self-generated green power by December 2030, at an estimated cost of $US6.2 billion, was its own “impossible” target. But now it’s aiming for the end of 2028. Fortescue metals and operations chief executive Dino Otranto told a media conference that it would not just power Fortescue but also generate a whole new revenue stream for the company, by fuelling the region’s other industrial players. It was “absolutely looking at” protecting its intellectual property for the grid, he said. “We’re very close to lining up customers two and three already,” Mr Otranto said. “We’ve already built nearly 700km of high-voltage network, which is what unlocks all of this infrastructure. “We don’t then need to have major new routes through the Pilbara or through First Nations communities. “We’ve largely got all those corridors already built.” Fortescue said it expects to complete 290 megawatts of installed renewable capacity to meet the fixed energy requirements of its ore processing facilities by early next year, enabling daytime “green processing”. It then hopes to power all of its operations for 24-hour periods without fossil fuels later in 2027. Fortescue said the entire grid would include 1.2 gigawatts of solar capacity, more than 600MW of wind generation, and four to five gigawatt hours of battery energy storage, with AI-driven management systems. Mr Forrest said the miner was forced to pay double the usual price for emergency fuel supplies last month, as gas supply tightened across the Pilbara in the wake of cyclone Narelle. Asked if Fortescue had pressed its contacts in China for fuel in the event the Iran conflict worsened, Mr Otranto replied: “There is a symbiotic relationship that needs to continue”. “We’d be silly not to have had a strategic conversation with our key customers, who really are dependent on Australia’s iron ore for their steel industry,” he added. Rio Tinto and BHP are both pursuing net-zero by 2050 decarbonisation targets, and jointly trialling battery-electric trucks to see if the lower-emissions tech can stack up against diesel. Meanwhile, Mr Otranto appeared to have conceded further delays with one of Fortescue’s other vaunted decarbonisation initiatives. He said in February that the target for first iron from its green hydrogen-powered Christmas Creek pilot processing plant had shifted from “early 2026” to “by the end of this financial year”. “We will have metal out of that facility this year,” he told reporters on Friday, not saying whether that meant calendar 2026. “We’re nearing the end of the construction. “That downstream investment will change the landscape of Australia as we know it. “We’ll get into downstream processing. The concept of ‘Made in Australia’ will be realised on an industrial, global scale.” Mr Otranto vowed the miner would not revise its cost guidance for the green grid project, admitting that inflation made it “increasingly difficult”. “It was a public commitment and we stand by that,” he said. The diesel crisis is threatening the smaller end of the mining sector where explorers and juniors do not have the scale to store or secure large volumes.