First-of-its-kind ship makes history with inaugural voyage: 'A better future'
In what could be a pivotal moment for the future of sustainable shipping, the world's first ammonia-powered ship arrived at London's Canary Wharf in March 2025.
According to Sustainable Times, the Fortescue Green Pioneer set out from Singapore in January and completed a journey of over 12,000 nautical miles after calling at Southampton for inspections.
After being given the all-clear by authorities, the ship's company hopes that the tour will demonstrate the viability of ammonia for use in low-carbon shipping fuel.
Fortescue's executive chairman and founder, Andrew Forrest, told Sustainable Times: "This will not only deliver a better future for the planet but accelerate a reduction in shipping costs through the widespread adoption and scaling of renewable energy."
The UN Trade and Development noted that shipping accounts for roughly 3% of harmful planet-warming gas pollution worldwide.
The massive cargo ships that carry out the bulk of global trade need vast amounts of fuel. Heavy fuel oil (HFO) is the most common type, which powers about 60% of the world's large ocean-going vessels, per Forbes.
HFO is incredibly toxic, and its density makes it much harder to clean up after a spill. Despite the controversy, it is still widely used because it is the cheapest form of heavy-duty fuel that is widely available.
Greener alternatives have been hard to come by until now. For example, hydrogen alone is extremely difficult to store and transfer over long distances.
However, ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, can be liquified, stored, and transported much more easily, as the U.S. National Science Foundation observed.
Ammonia is just one of several areas of promising research into alternative fuel sources. While the inaugural journey is promising, there are still some key hurdles to be overcome for it to be viable at scale.
Would you want EV-charging roads installed in your town?
Sign me up
Depends how much it costs
No way
I'm not sure
Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.
Research from MIT, published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, found that ammonia as a fuel poses key health risks that will require careful management in the future.
"We find that the public health impacts of switching from fossil fuel to ammonia depends largely on the technology and policy choices," the study detailed.
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
21-05-2025
- Bloomberg
Debate Heats Up on Future of Australia's Mining Hub
Good morning folks, it's Adam here in Sydney bringing you all the latest news from our bureaus across the globe. Today's must-reads: • Rio Tinto executive defends future of the Pilbara • Bitcoin hits record high • Ex-BofA banker faces insider trading probe We start with a division of opinion over the future of Western Australia's Pilbara region. Rio Tinto executive Simon Trott has defended the iron ore hub's prospects, after mining billionaire Andrew Forrest delivered a downbeat message.
Bloomberg
21-05-2025
- Bloomberg
Rio Tinto Defends Pilbara After Forrest Voices ‘Wasteland' Fears
A Rio Tinto Group executive has defended the future of Australia 's iron ore hub, after mining billionaire Andrew Forrest delivered a downbeat message on its prospects unless it gets more green investment. Fortescue Ltd. founder Forrest flagged fears that China's potential pivot away from traditional coal-powered blast furnaces would threaten the Pilbara, which has less of the higher grade ore needed for greener production. The Asian powerhouse was likely to turn to Brazil and Africa, which have more higher grade supplies, he told the AFR Mining Summit in Perth on Wednesday.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘Net zero is a f------ con', says mining tycoon going green
No one can say Andrew Forrest doesn't put his money where his mouth is. The Australian billionaire has spent years and billions of dollars trying to transform his mining company, Fortescue, from one of the world's largest polluters into a clean energy champion. And until recently, he could at least claim to be moving in step with prevailing trends. But as other businesses scale back green investment and Donald Trump preaches 'drill, baby, drill', Forrest's climate evangelism is beginning to look riskier. 'It's fair to say I was swimming with the tide before, because that was the truth,' the businessman growls in an interview at The Telegraph's London office. 'I'm still swimming in the same f------ direction, in case you haven't noticed. It's just harder now.' In Forrest's eyes, the mounting backlash against net zero from Trump, Nigel Farage and others isn't just an environmental catastrophe – it's a business mistake too. And he intends to take full advantage, as the likes of BP and Shell retreat from green energy. 'They've all walked back all these great projects. Every technology that everyone was working on,' he says. 'There's no one else standing now other than Fortescue. We are standing strong. As a marine scientist, it's terrible. But speaking as a business person, it's manna from heaven.' Forrest's opponents would be foolish to write him off. The entrepreneur took on more established mining giants including Rio Tinto, BHP and Anglo American to make his fortune, supplying huge amounts of iron ore to China following a giant discovery in Pilbara, Western Australia. Today, Fortescue is the fourth-largest iron ore producer in the world and its founder is estimated to command a personal fortune of nearly $15bn (£11.2bn). Forrest has pledged to give all his riches to charity within his lifetime and runs the philanthropic Minderoo Foundation with his wife, Nicola. His Damascene conversion to the climate cause came after he nearly died in a 2016 hiking accident and spent his recovery studying marine ecology, and learning how global warming was ravaging the oceans. By 2020, Forrest declared that Fortescue would kick its own fossil fuel habit and instead become a pioneer of solutions to the problem 'through invention'. His overarching plan is for the company to slash costs by generating green energy and then profit by supplying the surplus to others. His biggest bet has been on developing electrolysers that can break down water into green hydrogen or reduce iron ore to 'green iron' suitable for steel making. The plan for green metal production amounts to another bet on insatiable demand from China, while Forrest believes green hydrogen can become a 'superfuel' that will replace natural gas and be burned in power stations as a backup for intermittent wind and solar farms everywhere. Through his acquisition of UK-based Williams Advanced Engineering, the technology arm of the Formula 1 racing team, the billionaire is also pushing the development of high-tech batteries that will soon power Fortescue's mining trucks and trains in Pilbara. And he has been lobbying European governments, including Sir Keir Starmer's administration, to back an ambitious proposal for a series of subsea cables that would carry abundant clean power to the Continent from North Africa. Yet for Forrest, all this is about his balance sheet as much as it is about the planet. Fortescue is today valued at about A$50bn (£24bn) by the Australian stock market, with its shares having increased by around 600pc in the past decade. And the billionaire believes switching to green energy is essential to its future. 'I don't talk about decarbonisation, OK? I just talk hard economics,' he insists. 'That's my driving interest as chairman of a super high-performing industrial group. And I'm on very safe ground.' He reels off statistics about the tens of millions of litres of diesel fuel the company burns through, costing it more than a billion dollars every year. By switching to mining equipment powered by electricity from wind and solar farms, he argues he can deploy these savings more productively elsewhere. The company is already using hydrogen-fuelled electric hybrid vehicles out in Western Australia. And Forrest recently signed a $2.8bn deal with Liebherr, the German-Swiss manufacturer, to purchase 360 autonomous, battery-powered trucks, along with 55 electric excavators and 60 battery-powered bulldozers. The trucks will enter service from next year – a testament to the billionaire's stubbornness. Forrest says he originally approached US giant Caterpillar about a potential deal, but was told it wasn't possible before the 2030s at the earliest. So instead, his company partnered with Liebherr, a rival to Caterpillar, and is now providing the battery and drivetrain technology for the new trucks itself. 'We said to Caterpillar, 'we've gone into industries which refuse to have us before and replaced them, so maybe don't do that,'' he says. 'Now, the biggest order which has ever been placed in mining history got placed with a competitor – using our drive tracks.' But in other parts of the world, Forrest's plans are suffering setbacks. Many experts remain sceptical about the economics of green hydrogen, due to the large amount of energy required to produce it and the difficulty of storing and transporting the notoriously leaky gas. In the US, Trump's attempts to defund green energy tax credits introduced under Joe Biden may also spell disaster for a string of Fortescue-backed projects, from a proposed battery plant in Detroit to a hydrogen production plant in Phoenix, Arizona. For now, Forrest says all of these are 'on hold' until the situation is clarified. But he has appealed to Trump's business acumen, arguing that scrapping the Biden-era subsidies would be disastrous for investment in American manufacturing. 'I'm a global investor, so I'm only going to go where I feel I'm loved,' he warns. 'We'll just press cancel. So it's a really dangerous game. And if I was the US president, I'd be backing every single horse in the race.' Still, outside of the US, the billionaire can count on some high-profile friends for support. Earlier this week, friends including the King and John Kerry, Biden's former climate envoy, joined Forrest at London's Royal Festival Hall for a special screening of Sir David Attenborough's latest documentary, Ocean with David Attenborough, which was half-funded by his foundation. His support for green causes has also won him the ear of other world leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron and Indian leader Narendra Modi. Yet although Forrest is an advocate for green energy – he has a surprising take on net zero. He detests corporate wheezes such as 'carbon credits', which he says will let companies carry on burning fossil fuels while patting themselves on the back. And he is equally scornful of climate activists who want the public to fly less or eat less meat. 'That is a really crap argument,' he says. 'We're not asking for sacrifice. We're not asking for de-growth. That's so stupid.' Instead, Forrest says companies such as his must stop climate change through sheer innovation. He wants Fortescue to reach what he calls 'real zero' by 2040 – where fossil fuels are no longer used because there are better alternatives. 'I believe net zero is a f------ con,' he says. 'Real zero is serious. Just stop burning fossil fuel. 'You'll get rid of climate change, because so much swings off that, and you'll lower your cost of living and increase your standard of living – and by the way, every politician, that's what they're there for.' Whether you agree with him or not, there's no doubt Forrest means business. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more. Sign in to access your portfolio
