Despite the avalanche of fossil propaganda, decarbonisation is happening, and the Iran War will only speed it up. Michael West reports.
“World energy markets have changed forever. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.” Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest says Australia’s energy security has been exposed by the war against Iran, and the answer is rapid decarbonisation.
He should know. As a massive iron ore exporter, the spiralling price of diesel fuel is hitting the Fortescue bottom line hard. One giant excavator chews through one million litres of diesel a year.
“Fossil fuels carry volatility, political cost and risk for mums and dads relying on it.
“If you are not energy secure, you do not have a free country, you do not have an independent company.
“Australia can remain exposed, or we can rapidly decarbonise and move to a renewable energy system that is secure, predictable and lower cost, and the best part – it’s Australian – made right here.
“The technology is already here, Fortescue is proving it. The only question is how quickly we all choose to deploy it.”
Forrest is doing it; spending $US900m to $US1.2B this year to do it.
Yet the cheap and clean solution for energy independence is countervailed by powerful forces. Surging profits of the fossil fuel corporations, right now in overdrive, mean ever more relentless lobbying muscle to push around politicians and media.
Even after two decades of climate wars, we are ever more bombarded by fossil fuel bots and paid influencers on social media while mainstream media remains captured by the fossil sector. Four of the five political parties – Labor, Liberal, Nationals and One Nation – are funded by fossil donations.
Follow the money!
It is a simple matter of following the money. While the technology is already here to largely decarbonise mining and transport (yes, trucking), and the electricity grid is already half powered by renewables, the din from the fossil lobby still has the jury of public opinion out on transition.
Even against the unassailable logic, irrefutable evidence that renewable energy has Australia in the twilight of its carbon economy, the “when the wind doesn’t blow, and the sun doesn’t shine” brigade – entirely ignoring the advance in battery storage technology – bloviates more vociferously than ever.
During the summer months, for the first time, renewables tipped in more than half the grid according to the National Electricity Market (NEM) reports. In recent weeks, it has swung between 40-50%. Wind, solar and hydro were 50.5% on Friday and 44.8% on Sunday.
It’s happening whether the horse and buggy brigade likes it or not.
NEM Report – March 2026
Andrew Forrest is investing billions of dollars to prove his point. This is no Pauline or Matt Canavan; it is a businessman putting his money where his mouth is. As many others are. And while it is true that Gina Rinehart, who finances the climate denial sector, is also big in iron ore, let’s follow the money again.
Forrest’s main income derives from iron ore. Yes, he does have gas interests, but Gina, in comparison, has iron ore, gas and coal. When she talks down renewables, she is ‘talking her own book’.
Forrest reckons he can completely decarbonise his enormous iron ore mines in the Pilbara by 2030, just four years away. He even says it can be done more quickly, and with the cost of fuel surging thanks to the Iran War, urgency is a thing.
For their part, BHP and Rio Tinto have been lukewarm on decarbonisation. They both are moving towards electric trucks, although their targets are slow and low. They would be faster if the Government decided to pursue common sense and withdraw its $10B in diesel subsidies a year.
Energy analyst Tim Buckley. LinkedIn
It’s not as if BHP and Rio, the largest beneficiaries of the diesel rebate, need it, given their astronomical profits. Nor is it likely that Gina Rinehart will suddenly come good on her ‘small government’ rhetoric and call for the corporate freebies to end.
Cleantech is power
There is no such lack of cleantech ambition by the mining magnates’ large customers in China, however. As energy analyst Tim Buckley puts it, the “carnage unleashed by the US-Iran conflict has exposed the fragility – and concentration – of global fossil fuel supply chains”.
“ … China is sticking to its script; staying clear of the fray and branding itself as the steady alternative to an unpredictable America. In doing so,
it is weaponising its cleantech supremacy as the ultimate tool of green soft power.
China has spent years pursuing its ‘self-sufficiency’ drive and electrifying its economy, says Buckley. It has spent more than $US220B building cleantech manufacturing, grids and energy infrastructure overseas since 2023, “and another $US120B securing critical minerals, strategic metals and upstream processing”.
This has laid the foundations of a fully integrated global supply chain stretching from mines to electric vehicles firmed “at a speed and scale no one thought possible even a few years ago.
Iran, he says, will only mean an acceleration of renewables as China is still reliant on oil, indeed, much of it from Iran itself.
Dismissing the insane din from the climate sceptics, the Russian invasion of Ukraine sped up the transition thanks to basic supply and demand. Corporate greed pushed oil and gas prices too high and made renewable energy a more attractive proposition, both wholesale and retail.
Ergo, the transition in the electricity grid over the past five years, and the take-up of EVs and household solar. And to those who would cry ‘but the subsidies, the subsidies’, let’s start by dismantling the $10B+ per year in diesel fuel rebates.
Diesel fuel rebate our biggest fossil fuel subsidy. What’s the scam?
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.