- Hyphen Hydrogen is expected to sign the hydrogen hub’s implementation agreement before the year’s end.
- Construction of the first-phase facility is expected to commence in January 2025
Hyphen Hydrogen Energy (Pty) Ltd, the selected bidder for a huge green hydrogen project in Namibia, is now expected to put pen to paper for the implementation agreement of the hydrogen hub before the end of the year. The deal is said to be worth USD 10 billion.
The company made this announcement alongside other updates on the scheme on Thursday. Hyphen said that the Namibian government had approved the appointment of a negotiations team to finalise the deal. When the deal has been signed, the front-end engineering and design phase will be launched.
Hyphen has also contracted Boston Consulting Group and Lazard as the company’s strategic and financial advisors. Both contractors join Slaughter and May, and ENS Africa to form the legal advisory team of the company.
As reported earlier, Hyphen has been selected as a gigawatt-scale green hydrogen production hub developer that will sit on 4,000 square kilometres of land within the Tsau //Khaev National park. The project, which has multiple phases, expects an addition of 5 to 6 GW of renewable energy generation capacity and 3 GW of electrolysers to produce an estimated 350,000 tonnes of green hydrogen yearly at full scale.
Construction of the first-phase facility is expected to commence in January 2025, with commissioning by the end of 2026.
Meanwhile, Hyphen’s sister company, Hyphen Technical, and its partners TransNamib, CMB.TECH and the University of Namibia have been officially chosen to develop a EUR-7.63-million hydrogen-powered locomotive conversion project, part-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the Namibian government. This initiative is the first step in the plan to convert the entire locomotive fleet of state-owned railway company TransNamib to run on green fuels, Hyphen said.