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South Africa, Netherlands and Denmark have together launched a $1 billion dedicated fund to support green hydrogen projects in South Africa.
SA-H2 is an innovative blended finance fund supported by Climate Fund Managers (CFM) and Invest International B.V. (II) of the Netherlands, Sanlam of South Africa (Sanlam), the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), and the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC), in collaboration with other strategic partners, Climate Fund Managers said in a press statement.
SA-H2 is the second-of-its-kind, blended finance fund for Africa to develop and fund green hydrogen projects.
Last year a similar $1 billion fund SDG Namibia One fund was set up for Namibia. Zawya Projects had reported that the fund will be operational by July 2023.
Catherine Koffman, Group Executive, Project Preparation at DBSA said the fund will be used to build a substantial pipeline of green hydrogen projects in South Africa. “This will give private sector developers access to risk capital from an early stage of development throughout from construction to operations,” she said.
In November last year, 20 green hydrogen projects were included in the South African Government Gazette with nine given status as strategic integrated projects (SIP) to expedite the implementation of these projects. “SA-H2 will be needed to support these projects and develop this new industry for South Africa,” said Joanne Bate, Chief Operations Officer of the IDC.
(Writing by Sowmya Sundar; Editing by Anoop Menon)
