Name of the Project
Green hydrogen-to-ammonia project.

Location
Tsau //Khaeb national park, in Namibia.

Project Owner/s
HYPHEN Hydrogen Energy has been appointed as the preferred bidder to develop the project. Hyphen will operate the project for a 40-year period, following the conclusion of the feasibility study and sign-off from the Namibia government.

HYPHEN is a joint venture between Nicholas Holdings, a strategic investment and infrastructure project developer, and ENERTRAG South Africa.

Project Description
The project entails the development of Namibia’s first large-scale vertically integrated green hydrogen project.

The project will be completed in phases.

Phase 1 will create 2 GW of renewable electricity generation capacity to produce green hydrogen for conversion into green ammonia. The first phase aims to produce 125 000 t/y of green hydrogen, to be further processed into 700 000 t/y of green ammonia for export to Europe.

After Phase 2, the Hyphen project will possess solar and wind electricity generation capacity of nearly 6 GW and 3 GW of electrolysis, which will yield 300 000 t/y of hydrogen, which translates into 1.7-million tons of green ammonia.

Potential Job Creation
About 15 000 direct jobs will be created during the four-year construction of both phases, with a further 3 000 permanent jobs to be created during the operational phase. More than 90% of these jobs created are expected to be filled by Namibians.

Capital Expenditure
$9.4-billion. The first phase of the project will cost about $4.4-billion.

Planned Start/End Date
The first phase is expected to enter production in 2026.

Latest Developments
The preferred bidder for the hydrogen-to-ammonia project is aiming to conclude an implementation agreement with government by August, opening the way for a full-scale feasibility study to enable the implementation of the project.

Following pre-environmental assessment phase studies and community engagements, Hyphen is gearing up for the feasibility study and is aiming to achieve financial close by the third quarter of 2024.

“That would then enable us to start mobilisation to commence construction in early 2025; targeting a two-year build and first gas at the end of 2026 and immediately rolling on to the second phase without demobilising the construction team,” Hyphen’s Marco Raffinetti has said.

Raffinetti has said that rapid implementation is being supported by the greenfield approach that has been adopted by Namibia, which views the project as the start of a large-scale green hydrogen export industry.

ENERTRAG’s Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz has said that the approach being adopted by government provides for “rapid scalability” beyond the Hyphen development and has the potential to lay the foundations for yearly production of three-million tons of hydrogen from Tsau//Khaeb.

The common infrastructure includes pipelines for desalinated water and return brine and for green hydrogen and ammonia, as well as port facilities and transmission lines to transport surplus renewable electricity into the Southern African Power Pool.

Key Contracts, Suppliers and Consultants
None stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Hyphen Energy, email info@hyphenafrica.com