Fortescue Metals : Dr Andrew Forrest Boyer Lecture

21 January 2021

The Companies Officer

Australian Securities Exchange Ltd

Level 40, Central Park

152-158 St Georges Terrace

Perth WA 6000

Dear Madam or Sir

DR ANDREW FORREST AO: BOYER LECTURE

Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (Fortescue) (ASX: FMG) advises that its Chairman and founder, Dr Andrew Forrest AO, has tonight recorded to a live audience the first Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Boyer Lecture for 2021, entitled "Oil vs Water: Confessions of a Carbon Emitter". A copy of the speech, which will be broadcast on ABC television on Saturday 23 January at 2.30pm AEDT, is attached.

The speech includes a reference to Fortescue's net profit after tax of over US$940 million for the month of December 2020, which is based on preliminary unaudited management accounts. Fortescue is scheduled to lodge its half year financial results for the financial year ending 30 June 2021 on 18 February 2021. Fortescue advises that the preliminary net profit after tax for the six months ended 31 December 2020 on an unaudited basis is in the range of US$4.0 to US$4.1 billion.

Yours sincerely

Fortescue Metals Group Ltd

Authorised by

Cameron Wilson

Company Secretary

Media contact:	Investor Relations contact:
Michael Vaughan, Fivemark Partners	Andrew Driscoll, GM Investor Relations
E:[e-mail]	E:[e-mail]
M: [phone]	P: [phone]

Fortescue Metals Group Ltd ABN 57 002 594 872	Level 2, 87 Adelaide Terrace, East Perth, Western Australia 6004
PO Box 6915, East Perth, Western Australia 6004	P [phone] [e-mail]
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**Check against delivery**

Oil vs Water: Confessions of a Carbon Emitter Dr Andrew Forrest AO

21 January 2021

The Boyer lectures are traditionally lectures - a speaker lecturing Australia about what it should do. I've chosen a different path.

This lecture is about what I'm doing to fight climate change - under the premise that actions speak louder than words.

But first - I have a confession to make.

The iron ore company I founded 18 years ago, Fortescue, generates just over two million tonnes of greenhouse gas - every year.

Two million tonnes.

That's more than the entire emissions of Bhutan.

It's also just 0.004 per cent of the greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere every year - around 50 billion tonnes.

The answer isn't to stop mining iron ore - which is critical to the production of steel and to humanity. The answer is iron ore and steel - made using, zero-emissions energy.

Australia has 70 GW of energy capacity.

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To put it in perspective, if the world's renewable energy resources were a power station, we'd be able to produce not 70, but millions of GW.

There's enough pollution-free, renewable energy out there to power humanity for the entire Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene is the age of humans.

But unlike other geological eras, the markers of our age won't be Tyrannosaurus teeth or asteroid craters, they'll be giant landfills of single-swig, plastic water bottles - fossils the moment they were made.

We have no idea how long the Anthropocene will last. But if we don't stop warming our planet - it will be geological history's shortest era.

The solution is hydrogen.

Hydrogen is the most common element in existence.

In fact, the universe is 75 per cent hydrogen by mass - so we'll never run out of it.

It's also the simplest. To make it, you just run electricity through water.

That's green hydrogen, the purest source of energy in the world - and one that could replace up to three quarters of global emissions, if we improve the technology and had the scale.

But right now, we don't use it for energy.

It's just an ingredient used in industrial processes. And we make it from fossil fuels -quaintly calling it grey hydrogen, to hide the fact that it's a pollutant.

Green hydrogen - the good stuff - is virtually ignored by the economic world.

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We're missing a colossal opportunity.

The green hydrogen market could generate revenues - at the very least - of 12 trillion US dollars by 2050. Bigger than any industry we have.

And Australia, with characteristic luck, is sitting on everything it needs to be the world leader - but only if it acts fast.

The tricky part is transporting it - but we are cracking that.

The journey to replace fossil fuels with green energy has been moving at glacial speed for decades - but is now violently on the move.

Our technology-led northern neighbours, Japan, South Korea and China have together pledged to put almost 8 million hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road.

Boris Johnson, who once wrote that wind power "wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding," has invested 12 billion pounds in green energy - and, way more importantly, banned the sale of all fossil fuel engines by 2030.

Even Australia, which declined to commit to a zero emissions target, is investing 300 million dollars in hydrogen.

Europe has allocated a trillion - that's a thousand billion - Euros to reach zero emissions by 2050 - while the US has pledged 2 trillion of its dollars.

And almost every major business in the world has committed to net zero emissions by 2050, including Australian companies, marching ahead of government.

These are laudable and genuine ambitions.

But if we wait until 2050 to act, our planet will be toast.

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