Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has flagged the potential for cooperation between Namibia and South Africa in the development of green hydrogen.
This comes as Namibia’s Presidential Economic Adviser James Mnyupe stressed the potential for the green hydrogen projects in South Africa and southern Namibia to complement each other in unlocking a large-scale green hydrogen industry by developing cross-border pipeline and electricity infrastructure.
“We envision a 2,500-km pipeline from Luderitz all the way to Saldanha, with a T-junction all the way to Secunda as well,” Mnyupe said, referring to Sasol’s petrochemical hub, in Mpumalanga, which currently uses grey hydrogen to produce fuels and chemicals.
He estimated the cost of such a pipeline to be N$352.6 billion (€20 billion) and stressed the need for cooperation between the two countries to support such an ambition.
“We cannot do projects like that alone,” Mnyupe said.
South Africa has unveiled a N$300-billion investment pipeline under a Green Hydrogen National Programme, which has been designated as a Strategic Integrated Project (SIP) for accelerated development under the country’s Infrastructure Development Act.
Speaking at the South Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town on Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa argued that his government was seeking to use the programme to position the country as an “investment destination of choice” as countries in Europe and Asia sought to import green hydrogen to both decarbonise and bolster their energy security.
South Africa, the President said, had the potential to produce up to 13 million tons of green hydrogen and derivatives a year by 2050, but to do so would require between 140GW and 300GW of renewable energy, which would represent a massive scale up in a context where South Africa had procured only about 7GW of wind and solar since 2011.
Namibia, according to the Ministry of Mines and Energy, is targeting to create a green fuels industry with a production capacity of 10-12 million tonnes per annum of hydrogen equivalent by 2050.
A new report released by global research firm McKinsey this week indicated that the Africa Green Hydrogen Alliance (AGHA) member countries – Egypt, Kenya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, and South Africa – need to invest between N$7.7 trillion- N$15 trillion (US$450 billion to US$900 billion) in cumulative investment by 2050 to realise the grouping nations green hydrogen potential.–The Brief/Mining Weekly
