Forrest says Ukraine war shows Australia must urgently achieve ‘energy independence’

Billionaire mining magnate Andrew Forrest says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must add greater urgency to Australia’s push to reduce its exposure to international fossil fuel markets and become “energy independent” by shifting to green power.

“We must be able to produce all our own electrons, our own energy molecules, make them right here in Australia … reliant therefore on no one,” the Fortescue Metals Group founder and chairman said on Sunday. “The Middle East has taught us this before and [Russian president Vladimir] Putin is teaching us this now.”

Because Russia is a key supplier of coal, oil and natural gas, the impact of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has rattled global commodities markets. “The world’s dependence on Russia for certain commodities cannot be overstated,” analysts at natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie said. “There will be lasting implications.”

News of Russian missile strikes on Thursday sent global oil prices breaking through the $US100-a-barrel mark for the first time since 2014, stoking fears that Australia’s already high average unleaded petrol prices of between $1.75 and $2 a litre are poised to rise a further 5 per cent in weeks to come.

As Russia supplies one-third of Europe’s gas via pipelines through Ukraine, global gas prices are also climbing, although Australia has not yet been adversely affected.

Dr Forrest, Australia’s richest man, has been spearheading a multibillion-dollar effort to diversify iron ore mining company Fortescue, which currently generates 2 million tonnes of greenhouses gases a year into a clean-energy group spanning wind, solar, batteries and zero-emission hydrogen

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Speaking with The Age and the Herald on Sunday from Queensland, where he was announcing a $3 billion project to develop a wind, solar and battery hub at Clarke Creek through his privately owned company Squadron Energy, Dr Forrest said: “green energy plans are our only energy security”.

“Oil and gas will never save us because we are dependent on whether someone in the former Soviet Union or the Middle East wakes up with a hangover or not,” he said. “If our kids say, ‘Mum and Dad, you could have made Australia totally independent in the 2020s, why didn’t you?’ We need to say to be able to say, ‘We did it. We had the leadership’.”