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South Africa’s $8.5bn Just Energy Transition Partnership is starting to take shape, with Eskom committing to decommission more than 20GW of coal by 2035 and promising more than $6.3bn to be invested in transmission upgrades. But there are also concerns about the direction of travel as the government separately considers adding new coal and gas capacity.

European Union Delegation to South Africa head of co-operation Bernard Rey told the recent Enlit Africa event in Cape Town that the EU was heavily committed to supporting the energy transition in Africa, while recognising the need for flexibility.

While advocacy groups are posing questions about the funding of the Lake Albert upstream scheme – and putting pressure on banks not to participate  – operator TotalEnergies on 9 June told African Energy that project financing for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) was being provided by shareholder equity and external debt, which is “being arranged with interested international financial institutions”.

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) project has emerged as an important element in French NGO Reclaim Finance (RF)’s campaign against the financing of oil and gas projects. RF campaign manager Guillaume Pottier told African Energy that the group was aiming “to ensure financial institutions no longer directly or indirectly support the development of new oil and gas”.

The rules governing a new mechanism for the international trading of carbon emission reduction credits is due to be agreed at the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which runs from 6-16 June in Germany. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – which has so far proved of limited value to Africa – is set to be replaced by Article 6 of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference’s Paris Agreement, which is intended to offer governments and project owners the potential to tap into a  new source of finance.

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline has boosted regional energy ambitions and is poised to swell the treasuries of Tanzania and Uganda, but while the project’s supporters laud its potential economic and developmental benefits it has also ignited a fierce debate over hydrocarbons financing and how deals are structured in the energy transition age.

Copenhagen-based start-up Solstroem has received a $150,000 convertible loan from Shell’s All On to roll out its carbon credit platform to Nigerian solar home system developers.

The Namibian government is continuing to negotiate a contract with its preferred bidder, Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, for the country’s first large green hydrogen (GH2) project.

The Luxembourg Agency for Development Cooperation (LuxDev) has asked for expressions of interest from consultants to conduct a feasibility study into the production of green hydrogen in Cape Verde.

Senegal is in line to receive $1bn in climate finance via the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), a joint initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and Netherlands-based climate foundation the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA).

Authorities in Cairo are anxious to get some high-profile green hydrogen (GH2) schemes going as quickly as possible. This means international companies that have signed MoUs with the government to develop schemes are in a race against time to complete a six-step project preparation plan before COP27 opens in November.

Galvanised by the possibilities presented by green hydrogen (GH2), the Cairo authorities have drawn up an extraordinary vision for transforming the Egyptian energy sector and economy in the coming decades. The plans include tens or possibly hundreds of gigawatts of renewable power, barrages of electrolysers, an entirely new export-focused energy infrastructure, plus renewables-powered sea water desalination projects to break the millennia-old dependence on the River Nile. Most of the technology, financing and fully worked-out strategies have yet to be put in place, but the government aims to sign the first commercial deals at the COP27 summit in November. African Energy gives details of this policy in a series of articles

With less than six months to go before COP27 opens at Sharm El Sheikh, a power shift is under way as energy and momentum drain from the United Kingdom’s presidency and build in Egypt’s camp. The early signs are that the next event will have a very different tone and character from COP26 in Glasgow, with considerably less emphasis on making big policy claims that may be hard to keep and a focus on getting climate-related business deals signed.

Total Eren and Cairo-based Enara Capital’s agreement to develop a green ammonia plant in the Suez Canal Development Zone (SCZone) is the sixth Egyptian green hydrogen (GH2) project to be agreed in the past three months. With Masdar, EDF, Amea Power, Maersk and Scatec already pursuing schemes, the pace at which these deals are being put in place demonstrates Egypt’s determination to establish a leading position in GH2 exploitation – and to make this part of a broader energy hub strategy.

Sub-Saharan African countries flared 12.15bcm of natural gas in 2021, according to newly-released data from the World Bank Group’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR), the equivalent of 32.4m tonnes of CO2 and $1.4bn worth of gas sales.