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3 months ago
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Australia’s energy and metals group Fortescue is reassessing timelines and pausing green energy project developments in the United States following the latest U.S. legislation to phase out renewable energy incentives, Fortescue’s founder and executive chairman, Andrew Forrest, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview.
President Trump’s tax and spending act, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed earlier this month, contains punitive provisions on renewables in the U.S. The legislation includes a faster phase-out of the tax credits for low-carbon energy, or reduces or simply abolishes these incentives.
“You’ve had a president come in and say that climate change is bunk,” Fortescue’s Forrest, a self-made billionaire who is a proponent of clean energy solutions, told the Journal.
“We are big investors who always go where we’re loved,” Forrest added, and “if we stop feeling the love, timetables immediately get suspended.”
Fortescue planned Arizona Hydrogen—a venture to produce liquid green hydrogen in the United States. Initially, the project was expected to begin production by the middle of 2026.
However, after the U.S. presidential election and the early signs that the Trump Administration intends to go after the renewable energy incentives, Fortescue said in an earnings release in February that uncertain market conditions in the U.S. had prompted it to reconsider the development timeframes of its Arizona Project.
Under the Big Beautiful Bill, the curtailed availability of the 45V tax credit for hydrogen means that “more than 75% of the total U.S. green hydrogen project pipeline is unlikely to qualify without rapid progress,” Ed Crooks, Vice Chair Americas at Wood Mackenzie, said last week.
Fortescue Energy noted it “is continuing to progress and refine its green energy project pipeline in a disciplined manner, with timelines adjusted to reflect global market conditions and policy settings.”
While reconsidering development projects, Fortescue is on the lookout to buy already operational green energy assets or companies in the United States, Fortescue’s Forrest told the Journal.
“I have asked the team to look hard across North America for renewable-energy companies or assets which are struggling,” the entrepreneur said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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