Hydrogen

AMEA Power, a Dubai-based developer, owner and operator of green energy projects, has developed a strong appetite for Africa over recent years. The company already built West Africa’s biggest solar plant, a 50 MW PV facility in Blitta, Togo. Its commissioned and under-construction solar projects total some 130 MW, spread between Morocco, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Uganda. The company has now embarked on a significant scaling up of its renewable energy capacity on the continent via new solar, wind, and hydrogen projects. Its has a pipeline of over 1 GW of solar PV projects in various stages of development in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mali, Chad, Gabon, Angola, and Djibouti. In November 2022, it also signed an MoU for a new 50 MW facility in Malawi, and announced in January 2023 the signing of a concession agreement and 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for a new 50 MW solar PV project in Côte d’Ivoire. Its African portfolio is also on the verge of diversification, with wind projects of some 950 MW in total being developed in Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Last but not least, AMEA Power intends to leverage on Africa’s significant renewable energy potential to produce green hydrogen. It has currently selected Morocco, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Angola for up to 3.5 GW of green hydrogen projects that could be approved over the coming years.  

Total Eren and Chariot Ltd have announced the launch of feasility studies to do-develop Project Nour, a large-scale green hydrogen project in Mauritania. In September 2021, Chariot had already signed an MoU with the Mauritanian Ministry of Petroleum, Mines & Energy to progress the venture. The agreement notably gave Project Nour exclusivity over 14,400km2 of onshore and offshore area where pre-feasibility and feasibility studies would be conducted to generate solar and wind power used in electrolysis to split water and produce green hydrogen and oxygen. The new 50:50 partnership between Total Eren and Chariot will pool additional resources into the project’s feasibility, with a view of developing up to 10 GW in Mauritania. Total Eren already work together on several clean energy projects in Africa, under a long-term joint-development partnership signed in November 2021.

Globeleq has announced today the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt’s New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), the General Authority for Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE), the Sovereign Fund of Egypt for Investment and Development (TSFE), and the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), to jointly develop a large-scale green hydrogen facility within the Suez Canal Economic Zone. The project will be developed in three phases totalling 3.6 GW of eletrolysers and 9 GW of solar PV and wind power generation. Globeleq will act as lead developer and investor and start with an initial pilot phase relying on a 100 MW electrolyser and focusing on green ammonia fertilizers. Egypt’s vast solar and wind resources have already attracted global investors into some of the world’s largest green energy projects there, including the Benban Solar Park. Earlier this year, Scatec had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the General Authority for Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE), The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE), the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), and the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), to jointly develop a green ammonia facility with a production capacity of one million tonnes per year, with a potential for an expansion to three million tonnes annually.

On Tuesday this week, Namibia’s Ohlthaver & List (O&L) Group and Belgium’s CMB.TECH have announced Namibia’s first green hydrogen production plant in the country’s Erongo region, west of Windhoek. The project will serve as a demonstration hub for hydrogen applications and is expected to start operating in 2023. “Depending on the results of the demonstration plant, a larger scale production plant will follow in a second phase, possibly using ammonia as transport fuel,” CMB.TECH said in a statement. Cleanergy Namibia, the joint-venture set up by both companies, aims to produce green hydrogen from solar power and for distribution to heavy-duty applications like trucks, locomotives, mining equipment and ships.

While Tlou Energy continues to progress on its gas-to-power project north of Botswana’s capital Gaborone, it is now expecting to produce hydrogen and solid carbon products even before electricity. The company has been working on developing Botswana’s coal-bed methane (CBM) reserves to generate electricity since its incorporation in 2009. It is notably focusing on the development of the Lesedi project, consisting in a 10 MW gas-to-power plant and a 100km transmission line from Lesedi to Serowe. The power purchase agreement (PPA) was signed with the Botswana Power Corporation just a few weeks ago. But beyond just monetizing CBM, Tlou Energy has been working on adding solar generation capacity on site to combine large natural gas reserves with solar energy and produce green hydrogen. To execute this vision, Tlou Energy signed in August 2021 a Heads of Agreement (HOA) with Synergen Met, an Australian hydrogen developer and plasma technology company. The project is now moving full steam ahead and the prototype hydrogen production unit is currently being designed, built and tested in Brisbane before its transportation to Botswana in H1 2022, Tlou Energy said today. The use of plasma technology for hydrogen production will be a first for sub-Saharan Africa and open up additional doors for the continent to decarbonize its energy mix. Along with South Africa, Botswana is a country who continues to predominantly relies on coal to generate power for its industries and households. “Tlou Energy and Synergen Met intend to use the hydrogen produced from the prototype to generate electricity and possibly for transport fuel, initially in Tlou’s own vehicles. Solid carbon will be made available for regional consumers that require the product,” Tlou revealed today. Details on the Lesedi CBM Gas-to-Power Project are available in the “Projects” section within your Hawilti+ research terminal.