THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ENERGY TRANSITIONS: THE CASE OF GREEN HYDROGEN IN SOUTH AFRICA

The state’s central role in facilitating renewable energy transitions underlines the importance of exploring contextual political-economic factors and their influence on the directionality and pace of decarbonisation in South Africa. Scholars have found that competing political agendas, economic interests and energy outlooks have hamstrung efforts to diversify the country’s power sector, which remains in crisis, reliant on coal-generated electricity and rooted in an economy based on mining and minerals beneficiation. As research attention shifts away from power towards end-use applications and hard-to-decarbonise sectors, how these contextual factors are shaping the trajectory of newer renewable energies in South Africa has yet to be elucidated. This paper investigates the case of South Africa’s developing green hydrogen economy, a national priority that seeks to leverage the country’s considerable platinum group metals reserves (as a premium catalyst in hydrogen fuel cells). Initiated in 2007 with Cabinet approval of the flagship Hydrogen South Africa Programme (HySA), the government has since galvanised powerful private- and public-sector actors – many of whom are embedded in existing energy and mining (and other) regimes – to develop related knowledge, competencies and products. A mixed-method single case study will be used to develop contextualised explanations of how political and economic interests are shaping state interventions and policies with a particular focus on equitable wealth distribution (a key objective of the Programme) and related patterns in financial resources mobilisation. Over the next three months, we will collect data from semi-structured interviews with key actors, supplemented by secondary data sources, including policy documents, government records and grey literature (2007 – 2021). Adopting the theoretical lens of the multi-level perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions, data will be analysed to identify core actor networks, causal influences and structures that constitute green hydrogen niche interactions within South Africa’s energy regime. The MLP is a prominent, systems-based approach to sustainability transitions studies offering a typology of transition pathways based on actors and types of multi-level interactions. The South African government has set an ambitious target of commanding 25% of the global hydrogen and fuel cell market, intended to provide a bedrock for national energy security, wealth creation and inclusive development. In this context, we argue that it is critical to understand how the political economy is defining the future of green hydrogen in South Africa’s energy system and, in particular, the mechanisms through which the stated objectives of equity and inclusiveness will be achieved.