Hyphen sees deal signing by year-end, sister firm heads H2 locomotive project

Hyphen Hydrogen Energy (Pty) Ltd, the preferred bidder for a massive green hydrogen project in Namibia, expects to sign the implementation agreement for the planned USD-10-billion (EUR 9.83bn) hub by the end of the year.

The company announced this along with some other updates regarding the scheme on Thursday. It said that the government of Namibia has endorsed the appointment of a negotiations team to finalise the deal, the signing of which will lead to the launch of the front-end engineering and design phase of the project.

Hyphen has also hired Boston Consulting Group and Lazard as its international strategic and financial advisors. They are joining Slaughter and May and ENS Africa to form the company’s legal advisory team.

As previously reported, Hyphen has been chosen to develop a gigawatt-scale green hydrogen production hub on 4,000 square kilometres of land within the Tsau //Khaeb National Park. The multi-phase project envisages the addition of 5 GW to 6 GW of renewable energy generation capacity and 3 GW of electrolysers to produce roughly 350,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually at full scale.

The developer hopes to begin construction of the first-phase facility in January 2025 and to have it commissioned 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.

(USD 1 = EUR 0.983)

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