Since 1959, the ABC (Australian Broadcast Commission) has sparked conversation about critical ideas with the Boyer Lectures. Each year features a different prominent Australian delivering a series of lectures on a chosen topic. They have stimulated thought, discussion and debate in Australia on a wide range of subjects. The lectures showcase great minds examining key issues and values.
This year’s Boyer Lecturer is philanthropist and business leader, Dr Andrew Forrest. His chosen topic is Rebooting Australia — How ethical entrepreneurs can help shape a better future.
In Dr Forrest’s lecture series he calls on Australia’s business sector to invest in clean energy, ocean conservation, and closing the inequality gap for the good of the nation. In lecture one, he calls for an urgent move to green hydrogen “on a global scale”.
Currently most hydrogen is manufactured from natural gas reforming. Green hydrogen aims to generate hydrogen from water using renewable energy.
But first Dr Forrest admits that Fortescue Metals, the iron ore company he founded 18 years ago, generates just over two million tonnes of greenhouse gas every year.
Two million tonnes — that’s more than the entire emissions of Bhutan.
The answer he says isn’t to stop mining iron ore, which is critical to the production of steel and to humanity. “The answer is green iron ore and steel — made using green, zero-emissions energy.” And the solution he says is hydrogen. Dr Forrest says “The green hydrogen market could generate revenues, at the very least, of $US12 trillion by 2050 — bigger than any industry we have now”.
For Dr Forrest, the question is not whether green hydrogen will become the next global energy form, but who will be the first to mass-produce it.
It’s a question of interest to many at the moment.
The Australian federal government launched their National Hydrogen Strategy in late 2019.
The hydrogen economy is a priority for the EU’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery package in what has become known as the European Green Deal.
The Roadmap to a U.S. Hydrogen Economy report forecasts that hydrogen from low-carbon sources could supply roughly 14 percent of the country’s energy needs by 2050.
We looked at the impact that green hydrogen might have on data centre design in this recent blog article.
One thing is for certain, Dr Forrest’s Boyer lecture series makes for topical, fascinating listening for anyone interested in ethical industry.
You can listen to Lecture 1 here: Oil vs Water Confessions of a Carbon Emitter. Having just returned from visiting nearly 50 countries in four months, Dr Forrest says he’s seen a paradigm shift in global thinking. Sovereign leaders, business people, politicians, financiers and technology developers have developed a “genuine thirst” for a rapid shift to green energy.
Lecture 2 is titled: Lighting up our Ocean. Dr Forrest mounts a passionate defence of our oceans and argues the key issues facing our oceans — deoxygenation, overfishing and plastic pollution — are our fault, and it’s us who must fix them.
Lecture 3 can be found here: The Economics of Inequality addresses how inequality manifests in our modern capitalist system — through intergenerational dependence on welfare, lack of access to finance, a lack of policy focus on early childhood development in vulnerable communities and through modern slavery.
