Tau names 24 hydrogen projects as R3bn fund closes first round

Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau has named 24 strategic integrated projects that government has identified to anchor South Africa’s green hydrogen build, several of them already through pre-feasibility, backed by 40 million euros from Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau Development Bank.

Tau was speaking at the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town. His argument is that hydrogen is one tool among several, alongside sustainable aviation fuel, green chemicals and green shipping fuels, advanced manufacturing and new export industries, that together carry the country’s reindustrialisation.

“These are the opportunities that matter. These are the industries that will determine South Africa’s competitiveness in the decades ahead,” he said. “Our ambition is clear. We must export more value and less raw potential. We must move up the value chain. We must become producers, not merely providers of resources.”

The money already on the table

The funding picture Tau set out is concrete. In August, Climate Fund Managers closed the first R3 billion of the South Africa Green Hydrogen Fund, anchored by the European Commission through the Global Gateway commitment secured with the European Union at last year’s G20.

That same Global Gateway has put a further R628 million in grants on the table. Of that, R490 million is directed at leveraging hydrogen infrastructure investment, which is projected to mobilise R10 billion more, and R138 million is earmarked to help Transnet green its own operations.

The project pipeline runs through the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan programme management office at the Industrial Development Corporation. That is the office that has identified the 24 strategic integrated projects and moved several through pre-feasibility.

Coega is the lighthouse

Through the Critical Infrastructure Programme Fund, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition is supporting Hive Hydrogen in developing what Tau called South Africa’s lighthouse green hydrogen project, the Coega Green Ammonia Project.

“This will not only benefit the region but will also contribute to the broader economic landscape of South Africa,” he said. “This funding announcement today is particularly significant as it practically puts in motion the Decarbonisation pillar of our Industrial Development Strategy.”

Hive Hydrogen is now concluding financial due diligence, which unlocks R12,5 million of R25 million in project development funding, with a further application for R25 million to be submitted at financial close.

We must export more value and less raw potential. We must move up the value chain.

Tau put the jobs case plainly, saying South Africa’s industrial transition pathways point to tens of thousands of additional jobs and billions of rand in economic activity over the years ahead. He did not attach a date to that projection.

Why the region is in the room

The summit is an African one, and Tau used it to press the case that the market is continental rather than national. Through platforms such as the Africa Green Hydrogen Alliance, he said, cooperation is being strengthened across the continent.

“No single African country will build this economy alone, but together we can build a scale that makes Africa’s offer to the world impossible to ignore,” he said.

For South African readers the arithmetic is the point. The R3 billion fund, the R628 million in grants and the Coega project are the first hard numbers attached to a strategy that until now has mostly been described in ambition. The due diligence at Hive Hydrogen, and the funding application that follows financial close, are the next dated steps to watch.

Source: SAnews (South African Government News Agency), Green hydrogen a key cog in SA’s industrialisation