Search results

Scatec’s solar leasing arm Release has signed a two-year agreement with French giant Engie to supply a 616kWp solar system for its hydrogen production plant at Anglo American Platinum’s Mogalakwena Mine in Limpopo province.

German development bank KfW is providing up to €200m ($237m) in concessional financing for green hydrogen projects in South Africa. A request for information from interested companies and consortia was issued by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Meridian Economics on 2 July, on behalf of KfW.

As the hype around hydrogen gets ever louder, governments and developers are putting forward grandiose plans to manufacture green hydrogen – ‘the new oil and gas’ – across the continent. African Energy has been sceptical about the hydrogen boom’s relevance to economies that are hard pressed to finance basic needs, but high hopes are being generated in countries like Mauritania and Namibia, where schemes to install an unimaginable 65GW of hydrogen-driven capacity are promised, writes John Hamilton.

For all the noise surrounding South Africa’s green hydrogen potential, even those most involved in synfuels production – whose infrastructure is seen as encouraging development of the nascent industry – seem a long way off delivering such ambitious projects.

With EU and other advocates expressing huge excitement over the potential for green hydrogen and associated products that can speed up the carbon transition, South Africa is striving to develop its nascent industry – even while it struggles to meet existing power demand and the country’s sovereign credit rating has tanked

The most abundant element on earth, hydrogen, already has industrial uses, but it could do much more to transform the global energy mix as industrialised economies and the global south decarbonise. Judged by the welter of governmental and corporate statements, hydrogen is featuring large in the thoughts of planners and project promoters. These range from Chinese hydrocarbons giant Sinopec’s plans to reallocate some of its Rmb87bn ($13bn) cash pile to projects “all along the hydrogen chain” to Australian junior miner AVZ Minerals’ green lithium mine project at Manono in Democratic Republic of Congo.

Attention in the two Maghreb countries least endowed with hydrocarbons has turned to the potential of green hydrogen and fuel cell technology. On 23 December, Moroccan energy minister Aziz Rabbah told a virtual seminar organised by the Arab Renewable Energy Commission (Arec) that the Arab world should harness the “fuel of the future” as a catalyst for sustainable development and the green economy. He called for the establishment of infrastructure and the creation of research and development centres.

The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) is tendering for an international technical adviser to conduct a study into the kingdom’s first green hydrogen production project. This is one of a number of studies and analyses that the agency will use to evaluate the possible use of renewable energy in sectors beyond power generation, including storage.