Andrew Forrest, thank you for joining us. I love speaking to you because this man never holds back. He always says it as it is. How do you think it—your, I mean, your reaction to actually Donald Trump, first of all, at the UN saying that climate change is a con was pretty fiery.
Well, look, it was just—it was a complete dismissal of the lived experience of people I know all around the tropical belt. I mean, I invite the president to come to where I own several million acres of land in Australia. Come and see what it's doing there. I mean, come on, dive. I'm a marine ecologist. Come and dive on the largest reef systems in the world. This is predicted science. I want to remind the President that when science predicts something and it happens, it's probably true. So predicted event coral reefs would get shattered. It's one of the first hit is tipping points, then the Amazon and then others. So, but I just invite him to come with me, come for a dive on the Great Barrier Reef.
Biggest reef system on earth, the longest fringing reef, 5,000 kilometres away, the Ningaloo Reef. Step out like I have into the middle of the ocean drive of the Indian Ocean. Dive on those islands which are devastated. They're covered in moss. They were the most vibrant ecosystems on earth. And as science predicted, marine heatwaves caused by global warming, fossil fuel emissions will wipe them out. Then come with me, perhaps, where he's an American, proud American. I'm a proud Australian. Our servicemen died keeping the world just together. 80 odd years ago, my uncle was shot down defending American troops, shot down over Bougainville Island, and I'm searching for his remains. I've been searching for his remains for many, many years. The villages help me in that search. They are considered fundamental to the allied victory in Papua New Guinea, in the Pacific Basin, because they helped us. They're still helping us. But they're moving their homes. They're moving the schools, they're moving the tiny little maternity hospitals back each year. And you watch the tides come up, come up, come up, and they're having to rebuild, rebuild, rebuild each year. I just want to invite the president.
If you're going to dismiss absolute bulletproof science because it suits a political agenda that you believe in—one horse in a race, right. You've got all sorts of energy horses available to the world right now and the North American people. But you're backing the old, tired horse. It's the old horse, which is oil and gas. And you're saying to your American people, we're going to put your lives and you're going to bet on oil and gas. And I'm just saying, whoa, don't do that, Mr. President. Global warming is as true, scientifically backed as you believe it's false. No matter how much time you say mistruth, it's still a mistruth. And if it's offensive, I'm really sorry. I'll give you the address number of my lawyers. You can accept or sue me, but I just want to lay out: global warming is happening. We're living it. We are your strongest Pacific ally. We are living it. All those votes you want in the Pacific Islands, they're living it.
But, Andrew, what does it mean for actually investment? So when the president says something like that, does private money and private capital double down on where it needs to be for the green transition or does it back away? Well, hang on. I mean, it's not just President Trump. It's all the banks. It's the institutions have all gone quiet on their green targets and have walked back on them. You know, it's not just him.
I'm saying, I'm sorry, it is. They haven't walked back on their own. They've been walked back because there's a gun at their head. So these institutions who rely on support from the US government are walking back because the president said global warming is baloney. Now, that statement, that's the only baloney. And so I'm simply saying, look, I have had a deep relationship with America. You know, you helped me build my company, I borrowed and repaid tens of billions of dollars. I have a deep relationship with China. These are all good people. We don't have to demarcate between the two. It's not all about economic appendages, which one's bigger? It's about the biggest threat, which I'm asking every businessman, every businesswoman, every political leader in the world: have the courage, have the caliber of your character to face into what is going to hit us all and is hitting the people of the Pacific and Australia right now. And that's global warming. It's going to hit North America and hard.
You have a lot of people. Are you decarbonising or are you accelerating the carbonization of your company?
Yeah. I think you shouldn't really believe everything someone says, but you should trust absolutely what they do. So we are in full-throated decarbonization, not because we're woke, not because we're greenies, but because we're hard-edged business people. We fundamentally know that going green is going to save us much more money than sticking with fossil fuel. The technology race is done. Green energy is leaving fossil fuel behind. Now, yes, there's pressure to not go green, but I'm saying there's a greater pressure and that's economics. And yes, we were a little lonely. But I'd like to announce with you that we're not lonely anymore. We have companies around the world leaning hard into pure commercial, practical multilateralism, deploying the world back together where it should always be.
So this is an announcement of a partnership with other big companies to decarbonise? Or is it pen on paper?
Oh, here. I say this is locked solid contracts. This is not flimsy heads of agreement. So these are some of the biggest contracts Fortescue will ever, ever enter into. I mean, we are Australia's most successful company in shareholder returns in our Australian Stock Exchange history. I mean, for us, these are large contracts, so they include contracts in Europe and crude contracts in North America. They include contracts in China, contracts in Australia, technology and research from all over the world, manufacturing from the brilliance of North Americans and Chinese technology and manufacturing. We don't care. We just care about the result. And going green profitably, proving that as emissions go down, FY19 profits go up. It's a simple message for every businessman and politician out there.
Andrew, so these are new. I mean, no one's heard about this yet. This is like a new announcement. Can you give us like a size and scope and idea of what exactly this looks like concretely? Like how much money is behind this?
Okay. Well, just to say that for our future and for the scale of agreements we've entered into, I mean, we've built out the world's most efficient iron ore logistics, rail, shipping, everything else system. We are the lowest cost in the world, and that's taken tens of billions of dollars. These contracts, Mark, putting that in the shade, they will be much larger, and that's because they involve incredibly competitive supply technology, solar, wind, storage, everything you need to glue that together. I put all of that power into creating energy systems, Francine, on a baseload basis for green energy, 24/7, every day of the year, every second of the day. But green—I'm sorry, it's green. Bad luck. It's also the cheapest, cheapest and anything—I mean, the cheapest and anything cheaper than anything.
This is—I mean, if you're going to combine low cost of capital—Fortescue has an excellent global banking reputation, low cost capital. Really your operating cost now is capital, the cost of capital, because making energy from wind and solar is as good as free, which the world never had in history. I mean, cheaper than dragging logs onto a bushfire to get warmth when we were cavemen. Cheaper than oil and gas, which is still men dragging logs on the fires. Just happened a few years ago. That's all oil and gas is. This is now a technology-driven, low cost, lowest cost on earth, renewable energy. Now, it's not firmed. It is going to be now we have battery energy storage systems and fuels which will keep those systems going, like my company has to. I mean, it doesn't shut down on Christmas Day or Easter. Every second of every day it's rolling 200 million tonnes a year. Trucks go around the world, you know, once or twice a day without a driver. We're the most automated company in the world. This is a high-tech company which shifts a billion tonnes a year, 200 million tonnes around the world, massive emitter going green.
So is that scalable for other industries and other companies?
Yes, totally. I mean, the mining industry has the same shareholders as I do, right? Rio Tinto, BHP. We all answer to the same big shareholders, and they're just going to say, hey, I don't care if you say you can't go green. Fortescue has its savings, $1,000,000,000. We're seeing that in our dividends. If you can't, you're right. Get off the stage or get someone in who will. Shareholders rule.
I mean, do shareholders care about green still as much as they did two, three years ago, or do they now just care about profit?
Look, I think in many cases where there's a lacking character, you have the thin veneer of the facade able to be ripped off because of the utterances of your president. You know, if it's good enough for the American president, it's good enough for our institution. What they can't say has not changed because it hasn't. Is economics back the horse with self-interest? At least you know that horse we were trying. And this horse has the biggest lead. This horse is the fastest. This horse is the lowest cost of energy the world has ever seen.
