JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The global Hydrogen Council is urging the world to scale up its hydrogen energy ecosystem at pace, which coincided with green hydrogen being declared integral to a new South African industrial framework at this week’s Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town.
While the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit was being told that the management office of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan programme at the Industrial Development Corporation had identified 24 hydrogen projects, the Hydrogen Council co-chairperson and Air Liquide CEO François Jackow was advising the world to “bring hydrogen to scale”, while simultaneously pointing out that the energy issues triggered by the conflict in the Middle East had reminded everyone that energy security is a “vital priority”.
While the climate topic, underscored by the latest northern hemisphere heat wave, remained a significant hydrogen promoter, it was appropriate that the decarbonisation need now be joined by “the state of the world, sovereignty, energy security, supply resilience, industrial competitiveness, energy strategy, and electrification”, which had become the additional strategic imperatives.
Clearly, hydrogen had a key role to play, Jackow stated during a Global Hydrogen Compass 2026 webinar covered by Mining Weekly. “The current crisis is on-going and not just a short episode in world history. This is reshaping, to a large extent, how the world is going to look,” Jackow noted, while emphasising the need for hydrogen to be at the top of the minds of the governments and stakeholders who are rethinking their energy policy, sovereignty and security of supply.
The evolution of the energy mix over the course of 200 years points to hydrogen advancing faster than any other energy ever has, Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli noted, while emphasising the importance of continued investment in the rewriting of the energy equation as a collective ecosystem to develop the necessary price point. “So, keep focused on the long-term prize that’s definitely there,” Simonelli urged.
CF Industries CEO Chris Bohn reported that the most significant advance from his company’s perspective was been the maturation of North America’s low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia market, driven by a stronger focus on resilience, competitiveness and transitioning into project delivery mode – “no longer talking about it, but moving forward with it.”
North America reportedly holds about 80% of the global committed low-carbon hydrogen capacity, with the projects advancing there said to be the largest on average globally.
Bohn expressed the belief that this growth was built on the US Gulf Coast being low cost, low risk and offering long-term offtake partnerships, positioning it to be producing about three and a half million metric tons of low-carbon ammonia at the end of the decade.
Jackow described as “exciting” the collaborative building of the world’s hydrogen ecosystem.
“We’re seeing a true spirit of alignment and that’s extremely powerful. I don’t think there are very many new frontiers where you have such a good alignment of complementary partners getting together,” Jackow reported.
Simonelli spoke of Baker Hughes working across the entire hydrogen value chain from production, compression, transport, storage, and end use within every major region of the world, which had afforded the company a realistic view of the pace of hydrogen’s progress and its elevation from being a decarbonisation discussion to being a much broader energy security solution.
With hydrogen already embedded as a permanent energy reference point, significant action is being seen in Asia, where it is the fastest mover.
“When you look at it from a resource perspective, Asia doesn’t have some of the resources that others do, so they’re looking at hydrogen being an opportunity, and we’re seeing considerable progress in China, but also elsewhere in the Middle East, as we look at hydrogen projects that are starting to emerge,” Simonelli explained.
Industrially, hydrogen was already playing long haulage, power generation and environmentally protective roles.
“We’ve definitely seen it pick up pace, and we think it’ll do so more as we go forward,” Simonelli predicted.
An interesting aspect is that hydrogen facilitates cost reduction by being storable for very long periods of time.
SOUTH AFRICA’S PLATINUM GROUP METALS
Through South Africa’s critical infrastructure programme fund, the Trade, Industry and Competition is supporting Hive Hydrogen South Africa’s $5.8-billion green hydrogen ammonia project in the Nelson Mandela Bay local authority.
Hive Hydrogen South Africa on Tuesday, September 15, awarded the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for South Africa’s pioneering $5.8-billion green hydrogen ammonia project to Spanish company Técnicas Reunidas.
“The Técnicas Reunidas proposal was outstanding in all respects. Our aim remains to produce the lowest cost green ammonia globally,” said Hive Hydrogen chairperson Thulani Gcabashe, a former Eskom CEO and Standard Bank chairperson.
In its final stage of development, the Hive Hydrogen project is viewed as South Africa’s lighthouse green hydrogen project as well as being the flagship green hydrogen project for the European Union’s global gateway programme in South Africa.
Under development is a renewable hydrogen and green ammonia production facility capable of producing a million tonnes a year of green ammonia for supply to international and domestic markets.
The projects own grid, connected large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic renewable energy plants totalling 2 930 MW, will power the green hydrogen and green ammonia production facility in Gqeberha.
Multi-faceted, the initiative is seen as being on the way to creating more than 20 000 employment opportunities.
The $9-billion FEED contract is due to commence next month.
On the strategic metals front, South Africa is the world’s biggest host of platinum group metals (PGM), which are used to catalyse proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers that generate green hydrogen and also in PEM fuel cells that convert the green hydrogen into electricity that is emission free.
Committed investment in clean hydrogen has reached $130-billion-plus and 90% of the 570 clean hydrogen projects are already under construction or operational.
