Australia’s second-richest person does not wait long to begin proselytizing, after taking his seat for an interview on a New York patio.

“We’re commercializing the beginning of the end of global warming,” he proclaims.

Andrew Forrest, mining baron turned green prophet, is talking about his push to become the world’s dominant producer of emissions-free hydrogen – a nascent energy source that he believes will unlock a revolutionary shift away from fossil fuels to power heavy industry planet-wide.

Sipping warm tea on a hot summer day, to the slight confusion of staff at the Peruvian restaurant where he’s set up camp with a half-dozen staffers before speaking at a nearby conference, he’s soon explaining where Canada fits in.

The country has the potential, he says, to produce enough hydrogen domestically to fuel its own industry – “all the processing plants, fertilizer, steel, artificial methanol, artificial aviation fuel, you name it.” But that would just be a “fantastic way stop.”

“Canada should be an exporter of power,” he says. “That’s our dream for Canada.”

It’s a compelling case charismatically delivered, by the man who became a household name in his home country – where he’s widely known by his childhood nickname Twiggy – after defying naysayers to build an iron ore empire through Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., which he founded two decades ago.

And at a moment when fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing energy strategies and relationships to be rewritten, Mr. Forrest has a receptive audience for his pitch – in principle, at least – in Canada and among its trade partners.

Hydrogen is far from universally embraced as a fuel of the future. Past waves of excitement around it have fizzled out, and there are analysts who believe it’s being overhyped again. They point to the extremely large amounts of energy and associated financial costs required to make it in a sustainable way, as well as challenges transporting it safely and efficiently across large distances.

That isn’t stopping some countries, led by Germany, from turning to hydrogen as a primary long-term replacement for Russian natural gas and other fossil fuels. And they, too, see Canada as an appealing source, if it leverages its relative excess of hydroelectricity and other renewable power generating capacity – particularly the potential for wind-powered generation in the Atlantic provinces – for hydrogen production.