South Africa spelled out a detailed green hydrogen pursuit roadmap at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) conference attended by 70 countries in Vienna on Wednesday, April 8, when South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) programme director: green hydrogen Rebecca Maserumule outlined the steps South Africa is taking to initiate first-mover green hydrogen project 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 hydrogen and oxygen and then play a second catalytic role by converting the hydrogen back into electricity that provides emission-free mobility for buses, trucks, trains, cars, ships and planes as well as stationary electricity for communities, green steel, green cement, data centres, and you name it.

Hydrogen anchors the global future energy mix, was Maserumule’s final statement after reporting that the initiatives that are under way to assist first movers include a 120-question final investment decision checklistas well as the partnering of first movers to international conferences.

“Next month, we’ll be in Rotterdam, and the delegation will be led by our Minister of Electricity and Energy,” Maserumule reported.

The panel discussion, covered by Engineering News & Mining Weekly, was moderated by UK global green industries head Paul Durrant and participating were Germany’s international green hydrogen ramp-up head Gunther Grathwohl, the Netherlands’ international and European hydrogen senior policy coordinator Rodrigo Scholtbach, Italy’s energy markets director-general Alessandro Noce, and Brazil’s renewable-energy division head Lais de Souza Garcia, who expressed strong optimism about the future of hydrogen in the South American country.

“We’re living in uncertain times now, so it’s not quite clear how much hydrogen we’ll need, but what is clear is that we’ll need hydrogen,” Grathwohl emphasised, adding that it was also clear that Germany was unable to produce the hydrogen it needed domestically, a situation which was quite the opposite in Southern Africa.

“We have amazing renewable resources in wind and solar to produce the hydrogen molecules and be a partner to the rest of the world,” Namibia Green Hydrogen Programme policy planning head Joseph Mukendwa pointed out during the opening panel discussion.

This was outlined shortly after the conference heard that two-thirds of the volumes of hydrogen needed in Austria would have to be imported, about which Scholtbach said ditto in the case of the Netherlands and Germany.

“We have in Europe one of the main demand centres worldwide and if you look a bit further, Japan, South Korea will also be depending on imported volumes,” added Scholtbach, adding that this presented major supply opportunity for the Global South.

“We’re open to importing hydrogen,” said Noce, while adding that hydrogen was not only a decarboniser but a driver of inclusive growth, to which Durrant, who moderated the discussion, responded that he loved the fact that hydrogen brought economic development and growth, with its cleanness.

“Africa clearly has vast potential for clean hydrogen production but many of the projects that we’ve seen mooted in Africa have yet to reach final investment decision. There is clearly a risk that if producing countries and their institutions are consistently required to underwrite the earliest and riskiest stage of development, without the strength of those offtake agreements and other things in place, those countries are essentially derisking projects for others at their own cost.

“From a South African perspective, what would genuine burden- sharing actually need to look like within partnerships to avoid a generation of green hydrogen projects not making it over the line?” Durrant asked.

In her response, Maserumule explained that when it comes to green hydrogen, South Africa is at the same inflection point today that it was at in 2009 with renewable energy.

“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, and 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 enthused.

“Now, moving on to the partnerships and what the sharing is, it’s in place because of the JET-IP, which really outlines the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between South Africa and a number of partners.

“I see the Dutch government here, I see UK here. I see Germany here, and other partners are coming in. There was a commitment of R1.7-trillion made to South Africa through the JETP.

“Now, the reality is all of that funding has not come through. Of course, the majority was for renewable power and a portion was earmarked for green hydrogen as one of the six portfolios.

“We have seen some funding. So again, thank you to the Dutch government, to the German government; and most of that money has been grant money to derisk early-stage projects and we have seen progress.

“But also, what’s important is that we need to support what I call the first movers, with actual funding to make things happen . . . then I would go a step further and say that even as producers are producing ammonia, hydrogen and so forth, we will actually need a reduction in our operational cost.

“It’s good to bring in funding for grants for your capex, but if we can find some way to reduce the opex cost, you get those projects to go over that green premium that we’re seeing between grey hydrogen and green hydrogen.

“Also, I think technical assistance is actually very important, and I’ll just give an example. We have a programme for what we call first movers in South Africa. It’s six steps that we’re taking.

“The very first step is identifying who the first movers are, based on an online platform to qualify projects with 120 questions. Seems like a lot, but in 60 minutes, you can fill in this questionnaire online, and we can understand how far you’re away from final investment decision. “And then partnering with those first movers to take them to international conferences; so next month, we’ll be in Rotterdam, and the delegation will be led by our Minister of Electricity and Energy,” Maserumule reported.

In that way, South Africa will be assisting those first movers by allowing them to have discussions with offtakers and even with their environmental-impact assessments.