Fortescue Future Industries: Are the iron giant’s bold green ambitions on track?

In 2020, Fortescue Future Industries was born to realise the then-Twiggy Forrest operated iron ore miner’s green ambitions, including in hydrogen. It is no longer a standalone brand and is integrated along with Fortescue’s broader operations.

The question this article looks at is simple: Is Fortescue walking the talk?

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Fortescue Future Industries

Fortescue originally launched FFI as an ambitious, standalone green-energy arm with the aim of transforming the iron-ore giant into a broader clean-energy and decarbonisation company. The focus was on hydrogen, then seen as the missing piece of the energy transition.

You see solar and wind were rapidly becoming cheap(er), but heavy industry — steel, shipping, fertiliser, long-haul transport — still lacked scalable zero-carbon fuel alternatives. Green hydrogen, produced via electrolysis powered by renewables, was positioned as the solution for “hard-to-abate” sectors.

For Fortescue specifically, hydrogen solved two strategic problems at once. First, it offered a pathway to meet its aggressive “Real Zero” emissions targets for its own mining operations by replacing diesel in haul trucks, rail and processing. Second, it created a vision for growth beyond iron ore.

So instead of being a price-taker selling bulk commodities, Fortescue could become a vertically integrated green energy and green metals company — producing renewable power, hydrogen, green ammonia, and eventually green iron. That narrative also aligned with global policy momentum at the time: Europe, Japan and South Korea were announcing hydrogen strategies, and investors were rewarding companies with bold decarbonisation plans.

The talk was bold

Early strategic targets — widely publicised in investor marketing — were bold. These included building a global green hydrogen industry capable of producing tens of millions of tonnes of hydrogen per year by 2030 and supporting decarbonisation of heavy industry broadly, with plans for dozens of projects across multiple continents.

FFI was positioned as the vehicle to help Fortescue meet its “real zero” emissions targets: eliminating Scope 1 and 2 emissions in its operations by 2030 and aiming for net-zero Scope 3 by 2040, substantially earlier and more aggressively than most miners committed at the time.

But things changed

However, it is 2026 and Fortescue is known as an iron ore player first rather than a hydrogen player. And this was for a number of reasons.

First, the cost curve did not fall as quickly as hoped. Green hydrogen remains significantly more expensive than fossil-based hydrogen or direct electrification in many applications. High interest rates increased the cost of capital for megaprojects. Supply chain costs rose. Many announced projects globally struggled to reach final investment decisions.

Second, demand certainty proved weaker than expected. Industrial customers were hesitant to sign long-term offtake contracts at the prices required to make projects bankable. In some markets, subsidies and policy frameworks were slower or less predictable than initially anticipated.

Third, Fortescue itself recalibrated. It reduced or exited several large overseas hydrogen developments and scaled back ambitions around becoming a major electrolyser manufacturer. Instead, the company shifted toward a more focused strategy: decarbonising its own operations first, investing in targeted R&D to lower hydrogen costs, and advancing projects like green iron that sit closer to its core iron ore business.

So are Fortescue’s green ambitions dead?

Not quite. The company shifted focus to internal R&D (indicating recognition that current economics aren’t ready for large-scale rollout), and streamlined its portfolio to focus on technologies and markets where it sees a clearer commercial path forward. So it is focused on using renewables at its existing projects.

But one focus is the Green Metal Project. Rather than just exporting raw ore, the idea is to move further up the value chain by actually converting iron ore into “green iron metal” — iron produced using renewable energy and green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels — at a pilot commercial scale to demonstrate what a future green steel industry could look like.

The project is located at Fortescue’s Green Energy Hub at Christmas Creek in the Pilbara, Western Australia, where Fortescue already operates renewable energy, hydrogen and prototype electrification technologies. Construction on the Green Metal facility began in 2024 with a capital cost of about US$50m.

The planned annual output is relatively small — more than 1,500 tonnes per year of green iron metal — but the facility is intended as a demonstration and technology proving ground rather than a large-scale commercial plant initially.

What’s more the plant is already integrating more than 160,000 solar panels to supply part of its daytime energy needs. By 2030, Fortescue intends the facility to be fully powered by renewable energy as part of its decarbonisation roadmap.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Fortescue is still pursuing green initiatives, but differently to what investors may’ve anticipated 6 years ago. We’ll never see Fortescue replace iron ore with hydrogen, at least not completely. But with its customers under pressure to cut emissions, it had to take some initiatives and we see them in the form of the Green Metal project, amongst others.

It would be fair to say it is ultimately a proof-of-concept for what future large-scale green steelmaking could look like. However, Fortescue’s initial volumes are small relative to global steel output, being the first mover in demonstrating this technology in Australia creates a platform that could be scaled or inspire larger facilities over time.