Andrew Forrest in green fuel foray as Fortescue UK offshoot inks deal with Swiss startup Metafuels

Fortescue has backed a Swiss startup hatching plans to make sustainable plane fuel from green hydrogen and methanol, adding the aviation sector to Andrew Forrest’s growing decarbonisation list. Accounts recently filed for one of the listed company’s energy-focused UK subsidiaries show the group signed up to buy a small slice of Zurich-based Metafuels in July 2024. The 2.78 per cent stake was worth about 1 million Swiss francs at the time, the equivalent to just over $1.8 million in today’s exchange rates. Six months later, Metafuels announced a $US9 million capital raising led by New York technology investment firm Celsius Ventures, bringing on Fortescue among others as a new investor. A Fortescue spokeswoman confirmed the mining and energy giant’s foray into sustainable aviation fuels. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to support the decarbonisation of industry globally and continue to invest in innovative solutions across multiple areas, including sustainable aviation fuels,” she told The West Australian. Fortescue has become increasingly active in the UK in recent years and has established several companies in tandem with its purchase of Williams Advanced Engineering in March 2022. Mr Forrest was in London earlier this month promoting Fortescue’s partly-green ammonia powered ship the Green Pioneer in a bid to stir up support for stricter maritime carbon rules. Latest investment Metafuels was founded in 2019 and has a mission to “make affordable net-zero aviation a reality”. Cash Fortescue has tipped into the raising will go towards proving the startup’s “aerobrew” and building a synthetic sustainable aviation fuel facility in Denmark. The extent of Fortescue’s role with the company is not yet clear, but Metafuels’ proposed technology would involve converting green hydrogen — a major ambition of the listed investor — into green methanol, and thus into a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Although efforts to advance the technologies are more advanced in the more emissions-conscious continent of Europe, Australia is attempting to make progress of its own. A “jet zero council” tasked with figuring out ways to cut emissions in aviation was formed by the Federal Government in mid-2023. But sustainable fuel plans took a blow in February, when BP halted plans to repurpose its old oil refinery in Kwinana into a $1 billion biofuels factory. The British supermajor had been targeting output of about 10,000 barrels a day of a combination of sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel, but made from bio-waste such as used cooking oil and waste fats. A final investment decision on the aviation fuel plant had been due before end of 2026. Responding to the Federal Government’s Low Carbon Liquid Fuels consultation paper in July last year, Fortescue said sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) was an “important market sector”. The mining and energy group also argued low-cost green hydrogen would be “an integral input” to the production of synthetically derived sustainable aviation fuels, or eSAFS, as opposed to biofuel derived ones. “The eSAF production pathway will be a critical industry that can build on the early decarbonisation achieved by the bioSAF industry,” its submission read. “ESAF needs to be considered a priority by Government so that itachieves scaled production and reliable supply for the aviation sector by the time these fuels are needed as feedstocks and before biofuels reach their production limits and supply plateaus.” Fortescue has plenty of pots on the boil to decarbonise and produce green hydrogen commercially, but will need to scale up dramatically over the next six years to meet its goals. The miner is producing about 530kg of hydrogen from a liquefied and gaseous hydrogen plant at Christmas Creek a day, but has been hindered at cranking up commerical production by high electricity costs.