Mapping the cost competitiveness of African green hydrogen imports to Europe

Figure: Overview of African green hydrogen projects by country and end use

Source: Mapping the cost competitiveness of African green hydrogen imports to Europe

📃 Article “Mapping the cost competitiveness of African green hydrogen imports to Europe” was published by researchers of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Oxford and ETH Zurich.

✅ The Key Findings:

📌The research covers:

• all projects planned to be operational by 2030.
• the analysis of African countries with port access.
• 31 countries, except Somalia and Libya, were excluded due to political instability and small island states.

📌 Overview of African green hydrogen projects:

• 34 projects are found across 7 countries;
• 89% of projects are either at concept or feasibility stages;
• 2 of the projects have reached a financial investment decision and are under construction, and only one small-scale project (that is, 3.5 MW) in South Africa is operational;
• From 3.5 MW to 6.9 GW is planned project sizes;
• 74% of planned electrolyser capacity is intended for ammonia (NH3) production

📌 Levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH):

• In a high interest scenarios 1 and 2, least costs for green H2 exported from Africa are €4.9 kg_H2⁻¹ without policy support and €3.8 kg_H2⁻¹ when fully de-risked by European governments.
• In a low interest scenarios, the costs come down to €4.2 kg_H2⁻¹ and €3.2 kg_H2⁻¹, respectively.
• no location competitive with the first round of auction results by the European Hydrogen Bank, which yielded a lowest bid of €2.8 kg_H2⁻¹ in Spain.

📌 Challenges:

• many low-cost locations are in regions that are either politically contested or encounter relatively regular flares of armed conflict.
• the size of the planned investments relative to the GDP raises questions on feasibility. This situation is concerning as many African countries face massive foreign debt burdens.
• whereas wind resources are critical to low-cost green H2 production, local expertise to install this wind capacity may be insufficient.
• some low-cost locations, such as those near the Red Sea or the river Nile in Egypt, may also face challenges of water insecurity potentially disrupting consistent production.

➡️ Source: Egli, F., Schneider, F., Leonard, A. et al. Mapping the cost competitiveness of African green hydrogen imports to Europe. Nat Energy (2025).