Fortescue founder toys with reverse greenwashing

First the $43 billion iron ore miner’s CEO, Fiona Hick, left abruptly on Sunday, barely six months after joining. Then on Thursday finance chief Christine Morris departed, followed on Friday by news that former Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Guy Debelle had vacated his seat on the board of Fortescue’s renewable energy unit.

The turmoil at the top is leading to volatility: shareholders sold the shares down 5%. But in trying to shrug off the mounting exodus, founder and executive chair Andrew Forrest, also known as Twiggy, introduces a new risk: reverse greenwashing.

Usually, climate change virtue-signalling involves a company and its executives setting targets their policies won’t meet, or launching products that don’t achieve the claimed environmental outcomes. Forrest is turning that on its head. The tycoon on Wednesday claimed the “only reason” people would leave the company he leads was if they didn’t agree with his plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

Granted, he’s pushing hard to get there, setting an ambitious target of real zero emissions in its iron ore operations by 2030 – meaning no buying of offsets as is implied in net zero targets, which he derides as a “Faustian bargain” and a “sham”.

He is also making a big push to develop green hydrogen and for the past couple of years diverted 10% of all mining profit to fund Fortescue Future Industries, the renewables startup where Debelle was a director. And he’s very vocal about his stance. His comments about Hick’s departure came after he delivered a speech about the danger to humanity of climate change-induced lethal humidity.

His approach to the energy transition is forcing a lot of change on the company in short order. That’s disruptive and perhaps accounts for some churn in the ranks over the past three years. Both Hick and Morris, though, were hired after these new strategies were put in place and after a long search – around a year in Hick’s case. That process surely would have involved rigorous discussions to ensure they were on board with Forrest’s goals and methods.

To part with so many hired hands so quickly suggests there was a difference of opinion over how, not whether, to hit those targets. That makes his absolutist twist to climate spin as unhelpful as the more traditional form of greenwashing.