Rich nations have an obligation to fund South Africa’s development of green hydrogen as part of a global effort to decarbonise, according to the Presidency’s infrastructure chief.
The most industrialized nation on the continent that depends on coal to generate 80% of its electricity has plans to attract as much as $250-billion into green hydrogen, an emerging technology used to split water using renewable energy.
“The developed world has a moral and ethical responsibility to help fund the adoption of green hydrogen,” Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, head of the Presidency’s infrastructure office, said on Thursday at a conference in the south eastern port city of Durban.
The comments add to a growing debate about who should bear the bulk of costs to decarbonize, when Africa accounts for less than 3% of the world’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
Up to R300-million has been budgeted by the government for research into the hydrogen industry, with input from Germany and Japan, according to Ramokgopa.
South Africa’s priority is to commercialize the export of green hydrogen by using increasingly cleaner feedstock to produce it, he said. The region’s platinum deposits also leave it well placed to benefit from the use of the metal in fuel cells.