South Africa’s hydrogen strategy moves up a gear

The platinum-rich country’s green hydrogen potential is attracting growing domestic and international attention

South Africa has launched a Hydrogen Society Roadmap (HSRM) that envisages green hydrogen production reaching at least 500,000t/yr by 2030, with electrolyser capacity hitting a minimum 15GW by a decade later. The plan was published on 17 February by Blade Nzimande, minister of higher education, science and innovation, following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s acknowledgement of the sector’s importance to the country’s economic growth plans in his annual state of the nation address. Pretoria first expounded a strategy for the deployment of hydrogen 15 years ago in an early effort to decarbonise the mining sector. But in tandem with an upgrade to the country’s emissions-reduction goals, the past 1