Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

Anticipated futures for green hydrogen production create new and enact old relations between the global North and South. We analyse socio-technocal futures and projects in the making, based on interviews, policy documents and media analysis.

Long abstract:

With the increasing political pressure of mitigating climate change, the chemical industry in the Global North is looking into different ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A key technology that is anticipated to make a difference is water electrolysis powered by renewable energy, also known as ‘green hydrogen’. Since green hydrogen production is an energy intensive process, the chemical industry based in Europe and The Netherlands is looking at countries where renewable energy is cheaply available. Several locations are investigated, but many point to the Global South around the equator, and in particular to Africa due to its close proximity to Europe, the seemingly abundant availability of solar energy, and the potential to stimulate local economies and ‘development’.

In this paper we investigate and compare expectations, visions and emerging green hydrogen projects in Europe and Africa, with a focus on the Netherlands, Germany and Namibia. We consider them as socio-technical futures in the making – reflecting their in-between status of partly being discursive visions and expectations, and partly materializing in the form of agreements, roadmaps, contracts, studies, financial agreements, technologies being built, infrastructures planned etc. Methodologically, we build on a series of semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders, a review of key policy documents and media analysis in Namibia. We study and compare visions, projects and debates around them with a focus on new relationships between Global North and South actors emerging, how these are discussed locally and how the past is percolating in the envisioned futures for green hydrogen.