Fortescue dumps vast WA wind, solar farm project
Fortescue has quietly scrapped plans for a multi-billion dollar wind and solar farm that was a centrepiece in its plan to decarbonise the company’s iron ore operations in Western Australia.
The Andrew Forrest-led Fortescue terminated approval applications for the Uaroo Renewable Energy Hub last month.
A Fortescue iron ore mine in WA’s Pilbara.
Fortescue had planned to build 340 wind turbines and a solar farm with capacity of up to 5.4 gigawatts supported by battery storage on the Uaroo and Emu Creek cattle stations about 120 kilometres south of Onslow in WA.
Uaroo is one of the cattle stations owned by Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s Harvest Road agribusiness, while Fortescue acquired Emu Creek in April last year as part of its ambitious green energy strategy.
The wind and solar farm covering more than 10,000 hectares was set to be connected to Fortescue’s Eliwana mining hub via a transmission line spanning 225 kilometres.
Fortescue started the approval process early last year and estimated Uaroo would take seven years to come online, right on the cusp of its 2030 target for transforming the iron ore operations to carbon neutral.
The project is now on the scrapheap, but Fortescue’s decarbonisation strategy continues to evolve.
Fortescue estimates it will need 2-3 gigawatts of renewable energy and battery storage to ditch gas and diesel in its mining operations.
Fortescue chief executive Dino Otranto, who took over the running of the mining operations and the $US6.2 billion ($9.5 billion) decarbonisation budget at the end of August, indicated Uaroo had been redundant for some time.
“Uaroo wasn’t part of the decarbonisation energy requirement, it was more for the ammonia export requirement,” he said. “As we are maturing our
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