JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Enticing support for first movers into green hydrogen project development is on offer via a first-of-a-kind government-led framework designed to assess the readiness and bankability of green hydrogen and power-to-x (PtX) projects in South Africa.

This follows South Africa’s official launch of the PtX project development standard (PDS), which includes green hydrogen and PtX developers being invited to register their projects and complete the PtX PDS questionnaire, with the assurance that all information will be treated as confidential and shared only with authorised partner institutions.

“The questionnaire takes less than 60 minutes to complete, in less time than it would take to prepare and drink a cappuccino, offering project developers a practical and efficient route to position their projects within a recognised national framework for investment readiness and investor engagement,” Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan (JET-IP) Green Hydrogen Programme Management Office (GH-PMO) director Dr Rebecca Maserumule outlined in a media release to Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Readers will recall that at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) conference in Vienna on April 8, Maserumule described South Africa as being at the same green hydrogen inflection point today that it was with renewable energy in 2009.

“We’ve done it with renewables successfully. We moved from strategy and policy to execution very well and I think today we’re standing here in 2026 because we had a great run of moving to renewables and getting projects on the ground.

“This is what makes the next stage of just adding an electrolyser, moving the molecules, either for domestic or export, really enabling for South Africa. This is why I know, without any doubt in my mind, we can do it,” Maserumule insisted, while emphasising the need to support first movers with funding to make things happen.  

In welcoming the launch, South Africa’s Department of Electricity and Energy (DEE) hailed the PtX PDS as a key instrument to support a credible and investment-ready pipeline of green hydrogen and PtX projects.

The department described green hydrogen as a strategic, cross-cutting sector linking electricity planning, industrial development, trade, infrastructure, permitting and finance.

PtX embraces technologies that use renewable electricity to produce green hydrogen, which is then converted into sustainable fuels, chemicals, and raw materials and enables the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, shipping, and chemical manufacturing.

“UNIDO remains firmly committed to advancing the hydrogen agenda in South Africa, including continued technical and partnership support to the Industrial Development Corporation's (IDC’s) JET-IP GH-PMO and key stakeholders of the hydrogen economy in South Africa,” UNIDO Climate and Technology Partnership Division chief Petra Schwager reported. The United Nations organisation has provided technical support to strengthen the scoring and weighting methodology of South Africa’s South Africa’s PtX PDS framework, convening international sectorial technical specialists and development partners.

“Leveraging its mandate as an industrial development organisation, UNIDO – through its dedicated hydrogen expertise and platforms – stands ready to provide strategic and targeted technical assistance to accelerate project development toward investment readiness and operationalisation,” Schwager added.

Launched by the DEE and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, the PtX PDS is being implemented by the JET-IP GH-PMO, which is hosted at the IDC.

A strong endorsement of the PtX project development standard template was made by the IDC, which described it as a catalytic instrument to accelerate globally competitive, investment-ready hydrogen projects.

“Standardisation is essential to unlocking scale, reducing risk, and positioning South Africa as a leading green hydrogen hub. We are proud to support this initiative as a decisive step toward mobilising capital and driving a coordinated global PtX,” the IDC stated.

South Africa’s competitive advantages for green hydrogen and PtX development are the provision of green electricity from superior sun and prime wind as well as strategic infrastructure, industrial capability, and a growing policy focus on decarbonisation and industrial development.

From a critical metals perspective, South Africa is the host of the overwhelmingly largest global volumes of platinum group metals, which can serve as catalysts in electrolysers that separate water into green hydrogen and oxygen and then play a second catalytic role by converting the hydrogen back into green electricity that provides emission-free mobility and stationary power for green steel, green cement, green chemicals, data centres, AI, off-grid communities, and you name it.

The PtX PDS initiative aims to strengthen South Africa’s pipeline of investment-ready projects, improve access to finance and technical assistance, and create a clearer pathway from early-stage project development to investment readiness.

By establishing a common reference point for project screening, the PtX PDS is expected to reduce information asymmetries, strengthen coordination across the ecosystem, and help crowd in investment for South Africa’s emerging green hydrogen economy.

The standard introduces a structured and transparent process through which project developers can demonstrate technical, commercial, financial, and operational readiness through the standardised questionnaire and assessment platform aligned with investor and development finance institution (DFI) expectations.

The PtX PDS provides transparent assessment criteria that reduce duplication and streamline engagement between project developers, government institutions, DFIs, and private-sector stakeholders.

The launch is described as marking an important institutional milestone in strengthening South Africa’s national pipeline of credible and investment-ready green hydrogen ambitions.

The framework has been designed with future scalability and replication in mind and may, over time, be adapted for application in other African markets seeking to strengthen project preparation and investment coordination within emerging green hydrogen sectors.

GIZ South Africa, Lesotho and eSwatini hailed the launch as an important step towards strengthening South Africa’s green hydrogen ecosystem through a coordinated and investment-oriented approach.

“We have continuously supported the development of the system as a technical partner and view the PtX PDS as a practical mechanism to improve project transparency, standardise project assessment, and support the identification of credible and investment-ready green hydrogen PtX projects in South Africa,” H2.SA/BVC II Programme Head Carolin Capone commented.

“The PtX project development standard is well-placed to meet the need to coordinate and align projects in this nascent industry. It offers great insights for funders such as KfW, enabling a seamless and transparent approach to funding accessibility to meet the needs of the projects. It is a welcomed tool for the market,” Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau stated in the release to Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

The conference in Vienna heard that Europe, as one of the main green hydrogen demand centres, was open to importing green hydrogen and it was noted that a commitment of $11.7-billion had been made to South Africa through the Just Energy Transition structure. While most of this was for renewable power, a portion was earmarked for green hydrogen as one of six portfolios.