Potential of solar and wind-based green hydrogen production frameworks in African countries

Abstract

Africa possesses a profusion of renewable energy resources that can address the continent's need for electricity to foster economic development and achieve international objectives for carbon dioxide mitigation. Green hydrogen stands out as promising among the plethora of available energy production, transportation, and storage technologies. The current study offers a general outlook on green hydrogen production utilizing solar and wind energies powering the water electrolyzers. This analysis estimates the electricity production and its production cost, hydrogen production and production cost, carbon dioxide mitigation, and estimation of the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) by 2030 in each African country. The results reveal that hydrogen production from solar energy outweighs that from wind. The minimum and maximum power consumption are 64.26–65.46 kWh/kgH2 for the PV/H2 system and 53.62–64.8 kWh/kgH2 for the WT/H2 system. Moreover, the LCOH ranges from 4.6 to 7.31 $/kg for the PV/H2 system and 5.6 to more than 20 $/kg for the WT/H2 system. Namibia and Egypt have significant LCOH of the PV/H2 system with 4.6 and 4.64 $/kg, while Cape Verde and Djibouti have remarkable LCOH of 5.6 and 6.37 $/kg of the WT/H2 system. The percentage reduction in LCOH is 25.23% for the WT/H2 system and 37% for the PV/H2 system due to adopting the 2030 cost scenario. Moreover, adsorption-based atmospheric water is considered a suitable solution for water supply in arid regions. Finally, the CO2 mitigation ranges from 109.8 to 177.7 kg/m2 for the PV/H2 and 0.1–50.4 kg/m2 for the WT/H2.