Kenya’s president William Ruto said today that his country has started on the road to becoming a hydrogen producer, although details were scarce.
At the UN Cop 27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Ruto said his government has signed a “framework agreement” with an undisclosed investor “to produce 30GW of green hydrogen” in Kenya. He did not specify a timeline for the plans nor across how many sites the hydrogen may be produced.
Ruto touted Kenya’s potential for renewable power generation capacity from wind, solar and geothermal sources, but it may take a long time before hydrogen production of such magnitude could be realised. Production of 30GW would be equivalent to three times the UK’s overall low-carbon hydrogen production target of 10GW for 2030. Even 30GW of electrolyser capacity — rather than actual hydrogen output — would make it one of the largest projects in the world. The Aman project in Mauritania, developed by CWP Global, targets 30GW of electrolyser capacity and is unlikely to start operations much before 2030.
Kenya is one of the founders of the Africa Green Hydrogen Alliance, alongside Mauritania, Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Namibia, and is the only one of those countries not to have announced a major hydrogen project. That said, the IEA expects that parts of Kenya could by 2030 produce renewable hydrogen at costs that are among the lowest on the continent.
Source : argusmedia
