The feasibility studies for a gigawatt-scale green hydrogen-to-ammonia plant in Namibia’s coastal town of Lüderitz are expected to begin this year after the selected bidder signs an implementation agreement with the government by August.
The Namibian government announced the selection of Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, a Namibian registered green hydrogen development company, specifically formed to develop green hydrogen projects in Namibia for international, regional and domestic supply as the selected bidder for the country’s first green hydrogen project, the cost of which is approximately $10 billion, in November 2021, following a competitive bidding procedure.
Hyphen’s Marco Raffinetti stated during the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the implementation agreement would mark the actual contract award and would initiate the feasibility study phase.
Scope of the Gigawatt-Scale Green Hydrogen-To-Ammonia Plant
Hyphen, a joint venture between Nicholas Holdings of the United Kingdom and ENERTRAG of Germany, intends to develop the project in two seamless phases, beginning with the $4.4 billion first phase, which will produce 125 000 t/y of green hydrogen, which will then be processed into 700 000 t/y of green ammonia for export to Europe.
Speaking at the Namibian pavilion, Raffinetti stated that, after pre-environmental assessment phase studies and community consultations, Hyphen was preparing for the feasibility study with the goal of reaching financial closure by the third quarter of 2024.
Raffinetti stated that the project’s speedy execution was aided by Namibia’s greenfield strategy, which saw the project as the start of a large-scale green hydrogen export sector. The concept was based on a commercial and technical common user infrastructure design to support future green hydrogen initiatives in the designated zone, which is located in the Tsau/Khaeb National Park.
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Tsau/Khaeb has a total area of 25 000 km2, with the first auction awarding 4 000 km2. The location contains solar resources of up to 2 800 full-load hours per year and average wind speeds of 10 meters per second, which are comparable to offshore wind speeds in Europe. Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz of ENERTRAG stated that the government’s strategy allowed for “rapid scaling” beyond the Hyphen development and had the potential to establish the groundwork for the yearly production of three million tons of hydrogen from Tsau/Khaeb.
Pipelines for desalinated water and return brine, and green hydrogen and ammonia are part of the shared infrastructure, as are port facilities and transmission lines to carry surplus renewable power into the Southern African Power Pool. After Phase 2, the Hyphen project will have roughly 6 GW of solar and wind power generating capacity and 3 GW of electrolysis capacity, yielding 300 000 t/y of hydrogen and 1.7 million tons of green ammonia.
