Hyphen woos Chinese investors

Attractive
China's solar and battery dominance a draw for Hyphen's Namibia project
Ogone Tlhage
  • 1 Day Ago

Hyphen Energy chief executive Marco Raffinetti has invited Chinese companies to invest in the firm's green industries project, which aims to produce 2.4 million tonnes of green ammonia a year once complete.


Speaking to Chinese investors recently, Raffinetti said Hyphen's project, combined with Namibia's solar and wind conditions, made the country ripe for investment.


Hyphen's project sits on about 4 000 square kilometres (sq km) of concessioned land within the Tsau ǁKhaeb National Park, in and around Lüderitz and Aus. It is the first project under Namibia's Southern Corridor Development Initiative (SCDI), a far larger, government-backed scale-up targeting three million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of green hydrogen, roughly 10 times the size of Hyphen's own project and equivalent to about 18 MTPA of green ammonia.


The SCDI is one of three hydrogen valleys Namibia plans to develop, part of a wider push to produce an estimated 15 MTPA of green hydrogen and establish the country as one of the world's largest producers.


"China develops 90% of the world's solar panels, 70% of the world's batteries, and 70% of the world's wind turbines," Raffinetti said. "Namibia has this ambition to grow tens of gigawatts, 30, 40, 50 gigawatts of energy generation, just in this 122,000 sq km area. That is an enormous opportunity for China, for Chinese equipment suppliers to supply the equipment into the projects in the south."


Raffinetti said sentiment around Namibia's green industries had been further boosted by a partnership between China National Chemical Engineering & Construction Corporation Seven (CC7) and Hyphen Hydrogen Energy to design and build a green ammonia plant, with CC7 leading the design and construction phase.


"The engineering, procurement and construction contractors come and work to help build out those projects in partnership with Namibia, and already this has started in our project," he said. "We are very pleased to have signed last year our first contract with a Chinese player, CC7, one of China's largest state-owned enterprises, specifically to look at the ammonia production components of our project, and now we are in discussions with them to extend that to various other aspects of the project."


Raffinetti said a fundamental strength was Namibia's inclusion of green industries as central to its economic growth.


"Namibia has made green hydrogen one of the central pillars of its economic policy to drive job creation and economic development in the south, very, very important, and Namibia is one of the lowest-risk geographies in the entire world."