South Africa has launched a Hydrogen Society Roadmap (HSRM) that envisages green hydrogen production reaching at least 500,000t/yr by 2030, with electrolyser capacity hitting a minimum 15GW by a decade later.

The plan was published on 17 February by Blade Nzimande, minister of higher education, science and innovation, following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s acknowledgement of the sector’s importance to the country’s economic growth plans in his annual state of the nation address.

Pretoria first expounded a strategy for the deployment of hydrogen 15 years ago in an early effort to decarbonise the mining sector. But in tandem with an upgrade to the country’s emissions-reduction goals, the past 12 months have seen an exponential intensification of both planning and project conception, now focused on green hydrogen.

500,000t/yr – South Africa’s 2030 green hydrogen production target

The 102-page HSRM outlines both the push and pull factors behind the mounting interest. South Africa not only enjoys vast renewables potential derived from intense sunshine falling on scarcely populated land, but also is rich in the platinum group metals required in electrolysers.

It is the latter, combined with a favourable location at the junction of two oceans, on which the authorities base confidence that the country can provide a competitive source of green hydrogen exports—primarily to Europe but also to rapidly decarbonising Asian markets such as Japan and South Korea.

Germany has shown particular interest and is providing around €240mn ($271mn) in concessionary finance to support the sector’s growth via development institutions GIZ and KfW. With major ports dotted along a 2,800km coastline, the roadmap also touts the long-term potential to become a major supplier of hydrogen-based sustainable marine fuel.

On the push side, the local economy is heavily dependent on energy-intensive ‘hard-to abate’ industries—notably steel, cement, chemicals and refining—where electrification is unfeasible. South Africa is by far the largest carbon emitter on the continent, pumping out more than twice as much as second-placed Egypt and placing around 12^th in the global rankings. The introduction of hydrogen to hard-to-abate processes offers a potential solution, allowing the country not only to meet its recently updated Nationally Determined Contribution emission-reduction targets but also to future-proof its industrial products against the increasing sensitivity of international markets to supply chains’ carbon content.

Integrated energy and chemicals company Sasol epitomises both the problem and the country’s wider awakening to the need to address it. The company is the second-largest local emitter after state electricity utility Eskom and its coal-to-liquids plant at Secunda enjoys the dubious distinction of being the highest single-point source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. At the company’s closely watched annual capital markets day in September, plans were unveiled to repurpose the facility, using the firm’s propriety Fischer-Tropsch technology to process green hydrogen into clean fuels, particularly for aviation.

400,000t/yr – Proposed Boegoebaai green hydrogen hub output

The following month, the company signalled intent not just to clean up its existing operations but to diversify more decisively into the green hydrogen business. Sasol announced a memorandum of understanding with state-owned Industrial Development Corporation to lead a feasibility study into the development of a $10bn green hydrogen hub at Boegoebaai, in the far northwest on the Namibian border. The proposed plant would use around 9GW of greenfield renewables capacity to produce some 400,000t/yr of hydrogen for export.

Bullish outlook

Ramaphosa’s bullish outlook for the hydrogen sector included an assertion that the HSRM would underpin a project pipeline worth some ZAR270bn ($17.9bn) over the next decade. Further evidence of the sector’s potential emerged in December, when the UK’s Hive Energy, local Builtafrica and Germany’s Linde announced plans for a $4.6bn export-oriented green ammonia complex at the Coega Special Economic Zone, adjacent to Ngqura deepwater port on the central southern coast.

Crucially, the project will be provided with a ready-made source of desalinated water from local firm Cerebos’ nearby salt-making plant, while 3.2GW of new solar and wind facilities will be installed nearby. Officials claim a memorandum of understanding has been struck with an unnamed buyer to offtake the plant’s 780,000t/yr output. The developer team envisages reaching FID by mid-2023, with the plant becoming operational by 2026.

While the first two major greenfield schemes are aimed at securing a slice of the nascent export market, increased attention is also being devoted to the use of green hydrogen to decarbonise domestic industries. In October, UK-based mining group Anglo American announced the positive results of a feasibility study into the creation of a ‘hydrogen valley’ stretching from the firm’s Mogalakwena platinum mine in the northwestern province of Limpopo via Johannesburg all the way to Durban on the east coast, in which hydrogen production facilities would be developed to help decarbonise the heavy-duty transport, industrial and construction sectors.

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Author: Clare Dunkley