There is sufficient funding available for South Africa to progress its green hydrogen objectives; however, certain elements need to be addressed for this to materialise.

This was outlined by speakers during the ‘Investment opportunities in green hydrogen’ session, during the 2024 Hydrogen Economy Discussion event, held in Johannesburg late last month, where stumbling blocks were identified and various suggestions put forward.

Nedbank Corporate and Investment Banking infrastructure, energy and telecommunications head Mike Peo pointed out that the country was pursuing 20 green hydrogen projects, which were gazetted in 2022.

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) senior adviser: financing Christoph Michel said that, while there was funding available globally, the projects were expensive, and given that there were so many, each would only get a small portion of this.

Therefore, he advocated focusing on the most promising projects and consolidating the funds and stakeholders bringing projects to fruition, which would act as a breakthrough for more projects to follow – “a lighthouse project”.

African Hydrogen Ventures MD David Sekgororwana said South Africa had positioned itself well, as a key player in the green hydrogen space in Africa, to secure available funding. Therefore, it was now a question of how to allocate funds, he said.

He pointed out that the 20 gazetted projects were large-scale, megawatt projects, which came with inherent complexities.

Sekgororwana also noted that other countries on the continent had flagship projects which were being advanced by stakeholders and government, compared to the fragmented approach South Africa was taking.

He therefore called for the country to prioritise one or two projects, and rally behind these, as Michel had advocated.

Moreover, he said these should be scaled down – while the concepts could remain the same, the projects should be smaller, and then scaled up.