The planned N$170 billion Hyphen Hydrogen Energy project, according to Namibian President Hage Geingob, is slated to start up in the first quarter of 2023.
This comes after Cabinet approved the makeup and appointment of the Government Negotiations Team assembled to finalize the agreement as well as the proposed timeline for its signature. Hyphen had expressed optimism that the Implementation Agreement for the project would be approved by the Namibian government before the year ended.
The front-end engineering and design phase of the project’s development will get started as soon as the Implementation Agreement is signed. According to Geingob, the signing of Green Hydrogen agreements and the mobilization of foreign direct investment in 2022 portend well for 2023.
The building of ten different green hydrogen-related projects in the Erongo and Kharas regions, beginning this year, is Namibia’s plan to launch the development of a world-class synthetic fuels industry. The grants, with a value of over N$1.52 billion, are being provided by international donors.
In November 2021, the government chose Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, a partnership between Nicholas Holdings of the UK and ENERTRAG of Germany, as the preferred bidder for the nation’s first green hydrogen project.
The project’s ultimate goal is to produce 350,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually using a 3GW electrolyser and 5GW to 6GW of renewable power capacity. It will be built in two parts.
