Climate change is already taking its toll on the priority areas that philanthropic efforts support, from education and health to food security and human rights. With worse to come, McKinsey research calls for philanthropy to step up its contribution to emissions reductions as a means to reinforce social welfare efforts.
Nowhere is this more necessary than in Africa, a continent overburdened with social challenges and particularly vulnerable to climate change. Responsible for less than 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, African nations find themselves caught between the need to generate energy for development and the imperative to avoid exploiting their fossil fuel resources to do so. In the narrative of the just energy transition, what Africa desperately needs is viable green alternative energy options.
One such option is green hydrogen. Already widely used in many industrial processes, hydrogen is a highly efficient fuel, with three times the energy density of petroleum products.
“In the narrative of the just energy transition, what Africa desperately needs is viable green alternative energy options.”
For all its efficiency, however, hydrogen requires substantial power to produce and it is its derivative source of power that defines the product’s colour designation. Black or brown hydrogen is produced from coal, grey or blue hydrogen from methane and pink hydrogen from nuclear.
Green hydrogen is derived from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal energy, which Africa has in abundance, giving African countries an advantage over developed nations in the race to capitalise on the technology.
The primary advantage of green hydrogen production for African countries would be its ability to store excess energy, thereby resolving the problem of intermittent supply from renewables and stabilising power grids. Green hydrogen could deliver usable energy that does not contribute to climate change and has the potential for export.
The technology is rapidly gaining traction and attracting funding. Namibia’s $10 billion green hydrogen project will produce 3 gigawatt (GW) annually for regional and global markets by 2027. In June 2023, South Africa announced the intended launch of the SA-H2 Fund to accelerate the development of the country’s green hydrogen sector. Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria are also in the process of integrating green hydrogen into their energy portfolios.
“Green hydrogen could deliver usable energy that does not contribute to climate change and has the potential for export.”
Although green hydrogen is a technologically promising option for Africa, its success will depend on public-private partnerships and establishing the right foundations. These include financing and supporting renewable energy projects while securing the minerals that will be needed to manufacture fuel cells. In addition to hydrogen production, storage and transport infrastructure, African countries will need collaborative research and development programmes that establish and sustain competitiveness in the sector.
Green hydrogen still requires significant promotion to gain traction as well as the development of the necessary skills to build the specialised workforce it will require. According to McKinsey, this is where the flexibility, responsiveness and agility of philanthropy can play a key role. Philanthropic efforts can lobby in favour of green energy options while leveraging their wide variety of funding mechanisms to support interventions that might attract further attention and funding.
Read more about environment:
- Read the Overview of CSI spend on environment in 2023.
- Read the 2022 research findings: Overview of CSI spend on environment 2022.
Source: The original version of this article was published in the Trialogue Business in Society Handbook 2023 (26th edition).
