Namibia's blueprint for green industrialisation

Green hydrogen can play a crucial role in the clean energy transition. Namibia has competitive advantage in green hydrogen production, and it is determined to build on it to drive a broader industrialisation process.

In this episode, we are joined by James Mnyupe, Namibia's Green Hydrogen Commissioner and Economic Advisor to the Namibian President.

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Transcript

Åsa Borssén:
Whether grey or green, blue or pink, the global hype around hydrogen seems unstoppable. The gas is a versatile energy carrier that promises to reshape the energy landscape. But who is best placed to reap the benefits? I'm your host, Åsa Borssén, and this is Highgrade.

Welcome to The Natural Resources Podcast. To take advantage of the global energy revolution, many countries are fast tracking green hydrogen strategies - and Namibia is one of the most ambitious amongst them. My guest today is James Mnyupe, Namibia's Green Hydrogen Commissioner and Economic Advisor to the Namibian President.

James, welcome and thank you for joining me.

James Mnyupe:
Thank you so much for having me, Åsa. I look forward to having a great chat with you.

Åsa Borssén:
Let me start with a personal question. I know you just came back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. What was your motivation, James?

James Mnyupe:
For me personally, I used it to honour and celebrate two men who meant a lot to me this year.

One was my father, my biological father passed in June this year, pretty much actually on my wife's 40th birthday. And the other of course was the Head of State who in many different ways was a father figure to me, and he passed on the 4th of February this year. And we actually started climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on the 3rd of August, which was his 83rd birthday.

And three years ago, we basically launched the request for proposal for this green hydrogen project that we've been building in Namibia, actually on the 3rd of August in 2021. So, it was quite a fully loaded trip, emotionally as well, of course, as physically.

Åsa Borssén:
And speaking of journeys…you started as a chartered accountant, but ultimately followed a different path.

So how did an auditor become a global champion for green hydrogen?

James Mnyupe:
Well, first of all, he didn't. I would struggle to consider myself a global champion for green hydrogen. It sounds like a very daunting title to add to your business card. But funnily enough, in high school, I actually changed my subjects from accounting to history because I was really struggling with auditing, believe it or not.

And it was only halfway through my first year that I changed my Bachelor of business degree back to accounting. And then I ended up doing nine years of the subject I really didn't want to do to become an auditor, only to really change that as quick as I can to become an investment analyst.

So effectively, I was buying lots of instruments, listed instruments for my clients, but in particular, we were buying government bonds as well. And through that practice, you would obviously have to analyse in a lot of detail what would the government do with all this money that you're lending to them. And I suppose I was fairly vocal about trying to help government think about how they can more accurately or more, I don't know, more productively use all the bonds that we were buying and commenting on the budget and whatnot.

And in 2019, the president asked me to be a member of the high-level panel on the Namibian economy. Essentially, it was 10 Namibians who were put together to advise the president on basically how to restructure the Namibian economy to make it more dynamic, make it more successful. And we were given a year, and it was pro bono, but within our own jobs, we basically did a lot of research, produced a report and in March, 2020, we gave this report to the president, said, hey, you know, all our brainy selves, we think this is what you should do. We didn't know it was kind of a yearlong interview because by May, three people got phone calls.

I got called and he said, look, you say a lot of things. Why don't you come and advise me from within my private office and be my personal economic advisor?
I paused and then I said, can I get back to you? And long story short, I had to call my wife, took a 78 percent pay cut, and by September I joined government. And then by October is when I first heard of green hydrogen because a big Australian developer CWP said Namibia had the best conditions to actually create and make green hydrogen.

I then applied at the time my analytical skills as an analyst. You know, I went and I got a Bloomberg terminal, actually three of them, for the Presidency. First time ever we did that. And after a lot of analysis and research, I say to the President, I think this may be a thing, I think this could be a very interesting catalyst for economic development in our country.

And of course, you can imagine in 2021, 2020 actually, if I was talking about green hydrogen, no one was really talking about green hydrogen in Namibia, let alone Africa. So, it was a big leap of faith, I would argue from the President to believe in the concept. But really that's where it all started from.

And then in March 2021, we had captured the idea into the President's socioeconomic manifesto, his last one. And then the rest, as they say, is history. It's kind of been a rollercoaster ride from there. It's been fantastic fun and it's been great for the country, I think. And, yeah, we have a lot to do still.

Åsa Borssén:
We've mentioned it a few times already, hydrogen. And it seems to be the buzzword of the decade. Can you, James, break it down for us? What exactly is the importance of hydrogen for the future energy grid?

James Mnyupe:
Sure. So, the truth is hydrogen in itself as a compound is already being used today in very, very significant volumes in our existing industrial landscape.

It's just that it's production typically results in a lot of carbon emissions, right? Because essentially you end up doing steam methane reforming and you break up very complex hydrocarbons and you produce hydrogen etc. So, hydrogen itself is not a new element. However, producing it using renewable energy, which is roughly what we're trying to do, we're trying to say, take a lot of renewable energy, sun and wind. If you have them in abundance, like Namibia, you have a great starting chance. You then use that renewable electricity to power an electrolyser, a machine that basically then separates the water compound into its two constituencies, oxygen and hydrogen.

And then once you can do that, really the magic starts to happen. You know, for example, once you have hydrogen not only could you use it to, you know, continue doing all the things you were doing before, like refining petroleum, but you can also start making new products like ammonia.

Ammonia is the easiest compound to start making with hydrogen because all you need is then nitrogen, which you capture from the air using an air separation unit. And basically you combine the N and the H2 and you make NH3 ammonia. And from there you can make fertilisers, you can make explosives, but you can also make ship fuel or even fuel that you can coal-fire power stations in.

Åsa Borssén:
So there's an entire rainbow, there's grey, there's pink, there's blue, but what you are focusing on is green hydrogen.

James Mnyupe:
That's correct. The colours of hydrogen merely denote what process has been followed to make this hydrogen. So very important again, grey hydrogen, or some people might call it black hydrogen, is currently how we make hydrogen every day, right. Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced using renewable energy, as I've just described.

Pink hydrogen is looking to use, for example, nuclear energy. White hydrogen, some people are saying, is when you can actually get naturally occurring deposits of hydrogen in the earth, and you'd have to mine that, for example. And so the different colours go on.

The key thing is, the hydrogen molecule is a hydrogen molecule. It's no different then, you know, any other of the different types. It was just how did you make it? And then of course the importance of all this is two things. Is it renewable? Right? Whatever process you're using to make this, is the quantity of the hydrogen going to be running out? So, whether you're making hydrogen with coal, oil, or even, for example, mining it from the Earth's crust.

All of those sources of hydrogen are deposit-orientated and can run out, and of course will require you to go mine more of that hydrogen. Whereas renewable hydrogen is of course, you know, not going to necessarily run out because you're using renewable energy and water from the ocean through desalination to make it.

So that that is deemed to be a much more constant or a much more reliable and available source of hydrogen, which can then, as we say, be used to decarbonising hard to abate sectors such as shipping, aviation, cement manufacturing, steel manufacturing, fertiliser manufacturing, etc.

Åsa Borssén:
Take Saudi Arabia, a very efficient oil producer, and there are multiple reasons for their success, but it ultimately comes down to a great underground resource, which results in a very low production cost. What does it take to become a competitive producer of green hydrogen?

James Mnyupe:
Ah, fantastic question. And so, I think people even underestimate the complexity of making cheap oil, even if you're Saudi, right. For example, Venezuela had a lot of oil and a lot of it was fairly cheap, but they're not Saudi Arabia. So, what's the difference there? And I think one should think the same when it comes to hydrogen, right.

Quite a few countries will have great solar, great wind potential if they are co-located, aka they exist at the same time, amazing, right. Especially if they're negatively correlated. Sun shines during the day and the wind blows during the evening and the night. That means your electrolyser is running for a longer period of time. So, we call it a higher utilisation rate for your electrolyser, which lowers your fixed cost per unit of hydrogen.

So, these are like the very basic things you'll need. Great wind, great solar, negatively correlated, fantastic. Then you need, if possible, access to the ocean. So, you can get, because you know, you don't want to be using groundwater to do this because that is also depleting source of hydrogen, right? Groundwater will run out.

So, if you can get access to an ocean that you'll desalinate, fantastic. And then if you do have access to an ocean, having a port would help a lot, right. Because you would need to get this product in some sort of transportable form, typically liquid, and then put that on a ship and then export that somewhere.

So, now we've gone through at least three or four different natural endowments: wind, solar, negatively correlated, excess water, a coast to trade, right, if you want to not just make hydrogen for own consumption. I would argue these are like the bare basic bones to be a decent green hydrogen producer, right.

Then on top of that, you need some of these softer, finer things. So, for example, you need a very affordable cost of capital. Again, a big difference between Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and the United States is when any of those countries, or companies in those countries, look to borrow money to buy a lot of this equipment, they will have a much lower cost of capital than Namibia, Kenya, Sudan, or even Chile sometimes, right?

So, and we've come to realise through the calculations that a one percent change in the cost of capital can have an up to seven percent impact on the levelised cost of hydrogen or the levelised cost of ammonia, right. Which means the lower your borrowing rate, the more affordable everything else held equal, ceteris paribus, the economists would say it. Everything else held equal, the more affordable your hydrogen would be on the global market.

So, in Namibia, one of the things we had to work very hard on was how could we mobilise cheap capital even though we were a non-investment grade rated country. So that's something you have to think about. And then ultimately, you would also need to think about economic diplomacy, because if you're going to make all this hydrogen and not all of it is for local consumption, you would need to trade with people.

Now, whether that's Japan, South Korea, Europe, whomever you're going to need to trade with, you're going to need good relationships with them, because they're likely going to have to be willing to buy a potentially expensive product, right, in order to decarbonise their industry, and they would be wanting to do that from a partner that they trust. So economic diplomacy, I think, is massively, massively key.

And then something Namibia would naturally struggle with, that we have to very proactively work on, is a labour force. And the complexity thereof, right, is you're going to be building some very large, very complex pieces of equipment and infrastructure, and you're going to be needing skill sets that you don't have to do that. So, you're going to have to import some, train some, and how you get that balance right is very, very important.

And then I would argue intra-regional relationships matter because a lot of this hydrogen stuff isn't just going to rely on infrastructure that goes from Namibia to Europe. We're going to have to be working, for example, for us with the Southern African power pool in terms of how we would be trading electrons, but sometimes even the molecules within the region.

So, as you can see for me, anyway, there is at least two, three, four layers on top of the natural endowments for you to become a successful, I think, hydrogen producer and exporter.

Åsa Borssén:
The natural endowments that you describe, the sun, the wind, the coast, it sounds a lot like Namibia. Are these conditions unique to Namibia, or are there competitors?

James Mnyupe:
Ah, they're definitely, you know, I don't like calling them competitors. I like calling them peers because ultimately, you know, if you want to win, you're going to have to work with your peers, right. You think about OPEC. These are multiple oil producers, but if they wanted to make the most of their fiscal situation, they have to collaborate on production levels, etc.

So yes, Namibia has lots of peers. Chile, right. Brazil has come into this space. Oman, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Mauritania, South Africa, heck, even Angola is getting into this space. Spain, you know, if you go into Europe. Australia, you know. So, there are quite a few players, countries that have some of those very, very basic ingredients.

And if you're Namibia, you're going to have to work very hard to, I wouldn't even say differentiate, but certainly to get your fair share of the global market share that's going to be developing for this product. And that's what we've been doing.
And I think the fact that there's more than one player or two, three, four players who can do this is one of the things that makes green hydrogen a very attractive potential source of fuel to decarbonise hard to abate sectors. Unlike the oil and gas sector which is concentrated in a few countries. This can be quite more democratically spread and as a result, for example, it could actually help to ease a lot of geopolitical tensions, right, where countries have to, you know, get involved in warfare just to secure energy sources.

In this instance, if we end up with a nice large liquid market, it could actually end up with not just more transparent pricing, but a lot less geopolitical tension in that regard as well. So roughly, I think this is where we're sitting at the moment in that space.

Åsa Borssén:
James, we've spoken so far as if green hydrogen is a done deal. But many argue that large scale adoption is actually not a given. There are technological, economic, market and infrastructure challenges. How do you respond to the naysayers?

James Mnyupe:
I'd say they're not naysayers at all. I think they're 100 percent right. You know, the Wright brothers, when they were trying to put together the airplane, it wasn't a done deal either, right.

Was it worth trying? Absolutely.

When Elon Musk was trying to land rocket ships back from like the moon or, you know, from space. That was crazy. It had never been done before, and it was expensive, and a couple of them were flopping. He almost went broke trying to do that, right. But now that he's doing it, it's beginning to change how we interact with space.

You could pick any invention, the bulb, electricity, Thomas Edison, take your pick. I don't think green hydrogen and the way we want to use it to decarbonise industry is massively any different. Solar panels, let me start there. 49 cents a kilowatt hour is what Germany was willing to pay for solar panel or renewable energy electricity from the sun I think two, three decades ago, two decades ago, I think it was.

And today they buy renewable electricity for five to seven EUR cents a kilowatt hour. And I think today Germany has shown a willingness to pay 1,000 dollars (CIF) for green ammonia from Africa with the H2 global bid. I think that's massive, you know, because I think that's the solo panel equivalent. That was Germany being willing to pay 49 cents. But you know, will it be a thousand? I doubt it.

But I do think, you know, the learning curve needs to start somewhere. So, I know it will be difficult to get this done, certainly in countries like Namibia that doesn't even have the level of infrastructure that say Egypt has, but I do think, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“If you do not ask, the question will always be no”- type of mentality is needed. But you don't just say, hey, I want to do green hydrogen and then put your head in the sand like an ostrich and hope it happens. You have to do a lot of hard work to make it as easy as possible for these relatively expensive early-stage endeavours to take place in your backyard because they could take place anywhere else.

And that's what we're trying to do in Namibia at the moment.

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Åsa Borssén:
You are listening to Highgrade and I'm your host Åsa Borssén. I’m here with James Mnyupe, who is the green hydrogen commissioner for Naimbia, and he’s making a strong case for Namibia to be at the centre of the green hydrogen industry. But that is just the beginning.

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Åsa Borssén:
James, let's dive into the broader opportunities for industrialisation. Because as exciting as green hydrogen is, it seems to me, and what I'm hearing from you, is that you actually see past a technical agenda and think of it as a vehicle for national transformation. So, tell me, what does the broader vision look like for your country?

James Mnyupe:
Yeah, geez, fantastic question. Luckily, I had some time to think about it. So, I authored, or we authored together with the Minister of Industrialisation and Trade, our late President, something called the Green Industrialisation Blueprint. And I would argue a big shout out here to Ergo as well. We worked very closely with Ergo to help us come up with this blueprint.

But ultimately, what the blueprint does is it studies all of our dreams and aspirations, right, that we had captured in our national development plans. And we've identified Namibia has a high level of unemployment, a low level of human capital index complexity, a low level of economic complexity indexes. We are very susceptible to droughts. So, we've identified all of these binding constraints. Then we went and said, however, with this new growth agenda or with this climate agenda, a new growth opportunity is presented to Namibia.

Great. But we really wanted to go beyond the philosophical, to go beyond the economic, you know, things that economic advisors would do write speeches and have some visions.

We then went and said, so practically, if we actually wanted to do this, what does this look like? Well, It looks like these five pieces of infrastructure are going to have to be developed: port, rail, transmission lines, pipelines, green hydrogen industrial complexes, stuff like that, right. And then we say, if we do these five pieces of infrastructure, they should be able to house at least these eight industries, right.

And those would be solar panel manufacturing, electrolyser, wind turbines, HBI, synthetic fuels, and a couple of others. And then we went, and we said, great. If these are the five pieces of infrastructure that can attract these eight new industries, how many jobs could that create? How much foreign direct investment would that attract? What are the potential exports?

And then we went and we mapped that out as well. And then we said, great, is this worthy of pursuit? We say it was, yes, it was. And then we mapped out a rough timeline of how we should do that. And then we added like a 40 slide annexure of looking at Namibia through multiple different lenses, whether it's our soil types or telecommunication networks or a road network, just so that a foreign investor really gets intimately familiar with Namibia.

I must say, look, I had some of these ideas, but working with people like Ergo McKinsey, Systemic, Kinesio, the World Bank, we were really able to piece together a piece of work that I think, you know, we're really, really proud of.

And then importantly, that piece of work identified how Namibia would interact with its regional neighbours to build some of the intra-country networks that are necessary to produce these products I was talking about, to trade with the world. We wrapped up all of that up with a nice bow and it's now there for everyone to scrutinize.

Åsa Borssén:
And it was an honour from Ergo's side to be part of this as well. And I highly recommend anyone to go and download it. So, in this vision, which specific industries could become ‘green giants’ thanks to hydrogen?

James Mnyupe:
Yeah, well, so first of all, let's shamelessly plug where they can find this amazing blueprint. It's www.gh2namibia.com, and then you go slash downloads and it's there. You should read it; I think you’d love reading it.

So, practically speaking, what's happening in Namibia at the moment? Well, after all of our marketing and our, you know, pursuit of foreign investors, Belgium's largest shipping company called CMB, and they actually recently bought Euronav, have decided to set up their African headquarters in Namibia. Specifically in Walvis Bay, and they're looking to build an ammonia bunkering hub in Walvis Bay.
In the meantime, they also did a green hydrogen service station, the first one in Africa, where they start producing hydrogen, dispensed it into long haul trucking and all sorts of other sort of transportation-related areas. So, they're looking to turn Walvis Bay into a green hub, basically.

In the same region, in the Erongo region, there is a pilot project that is at the moment building the first of its kind kiln, or a furnace, which is horizontally placed, not vertical, and it will treat iron ore with hydrogen. And I mean, their process to me is just ridiculously, redonkulously cool.

They will take hydrogen, use it to reduce iron ore and in the process, when the hydrogen binds with iron ore, with the oxygen, it produces water. They capture that water and run it through the same loop to produce hydrogen again through an electrolyser, use it to treat more iron ore and capture the hydrogen. So, their water needs are actually circular like they're they don't need desalination really.
Then the iron ore gets reduced to DRI that becomes a new commodity that we can trade. And we can sell that to green steel makers, whether it's in Sweden or Germany or elsewhere. So that's a pretty cool second industry that's happening.

So there's one super cool secret study we're doing with them as well. You know, Åsa, imagine this, you take the iron, the DRI, and you transport it to Germany. And then through a chemical reaction, you can get water in Germany to react with the iron ore. The iron ore captures the oxygen and produces hydrogen. So the DRI made in Namibia becomes a hydrogen carrier for strategic hydrogen buffers in the German energy ecosystem. So you can use that iron ore to make steel, or you can use that iron ore to make hydrogen. I think that's cool. Crazy cool. So we're doing a study on that. I think we, if the early results of those studies should be out by before the end of this year.

So, I mean, again, Namibia is now turning into this hotbed of IP, intellectual property, R&D - super cool. So that's the second one.

The third one is a more obvious one. And they are now three or four fairly large projects that are looking to make green ammonia. So large scale renewables, electrolysis plants, ammonia synthesis plants. One of them is Hyphen, it's sort of the larger one that everyone knows. They would be looking to make ammonia for trading into the global market. Some of it into Asia, some of it into Europe.

You've got Daures that wants to make ammonia potentially to produce fertiliser for local consumption here in Namibia. And then you've got Zhero, which is essentially a project by, you know, TES, Marco Alverà, Paddy Padmanathan, but they're working fairly closely with Envision to develop another one of these large-scale projects in Namibia as well. So that's roughly, I would argue, a third group of players.

There are interesting conversations we're having about, because everyone's saying Namibia is going to be a hydrogen exporter, so far, you've seen we're not exporting hydrogen at all. At best, we're exporting ammonia and we're exporting iron ore, which is, I think, very interesting for Namibian people, because we always thought, okay, we're going to be a hydrogen exporter.

But actually, we're exporting much more complex products, right. Which means we're adding way more value to our sun and wind than we thought.

However, at the moment, we're also doing a feasibility study of building a pipeline from Namibia, a hydrogen pipeline to South Africa. So, imagine a scenario where Namibia, which normally imports electricity from South Africa, not only one day could export electricity to South Africa, but could also export hydrogen to South Africa.

Namibia then becomes the single most strategic country, I suppose other than South Africa itself, to decarbonise the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the Continent, which is a big difference between us, Morocco, Mauritania, and Egypt. Morocco, Mauritania, and Egypt are very strategically placed to decarbonise Europe.

It's not really an industry, but a fourth vector where, yes, we may actually look to export hydrogen, but importantly, not to Europe, not to Chile, not to Japan, but to fellow African consumers right here on the continent and in the meantime, build a pretty strategic piece of intra-African hydrogen backbone similar to what is being envisioned to be to be built in Europe.

Åsa Borssén:
James, I assume that your ambitious plan will require a huge amount of capital, far more than is available locally. So, who will fund Namibia's blueprint?

James Mnyupe:
Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic question, by the way, because I think there are a lot of people who think the Namibian government is funding all of it, and that's not the truth, right.

So, if you think about a cell phone production, right. Who's funding Apple's production of cell phones? Believe it or not, some of it is funded by China. Because those Apple products are made in factories in China that make use of the public goods, right, that are provided by the Chinese government. Some of that is obviously funded through R&D by the Americans, right, through Apple.

But it really is that complex. It's not like, well, you know, so if we brought down a blueprint, we would likely have to fund a lot of the port developments. A lot of the rail developments, to a sum of the national transmission lines, pipelines. But at the same time, a lot of those things I just said, we're going to fund as a Namibian government are actually likely going to be in PPPs, JVs.

Think about the port developments, they were likely to do this with the Port of Antwerp and the port of Rotterdam together with our Namport. So, already the fiscal burden on the Namibian government is almost halved, right. And then to do that, we realised that, look, if we try to raise money on our own balance sheet, which has a BB minus or a BB credit rating, depending on which rating agency you use, it's going to be more expensive.

So, we had a strategic conversation with the EU and they were willing to give us a triple A rated facility, essentially for us to borrow cheaply to fund some of these dollar denominated assets. So, the EU might give us about a 500 million facility and we can use it to then fund some of the infrastructure, which the industries could then be built on.

Now, who's going to be funding the industry like Hyphen, HyIron, Cleanenergy? Well, the private sector will. But even there we have played a role in helping to mobilise some of that funding. We had very strategic conversations with the Dutch, and we've put together a blended financing infrastructure fund called SDG Namibia One, which has managed to mobilise some grant funding and some other concessional debt funding.

We're looking to raise some equity funding as well to have a billion-dollar construction fund together with a hundred-million-dollar development fund. And these funds should be used to de risk the development of some of the green hydrogen projects and some of its related infrastructure, right.

So you can see that, yes, the government will have to fund some infrastructure.  But the government working with the EU or the government working with the Dutch government or working with others is also mobilising some funding to get the projects going as well.

It's still a long journey to walk, Åsa. I mean, some of these assets are expensive, but I would argue that green diplomacy, diplomacy with countries that have related ambitions to decarbonise the planet have been a game changer for us. And if we continue to execute well, it'll likely be one of the key needle movers of why we were successful in this space.

Åsa Borssén:
This has been such a great conversation, James. And before I let you go; I know that you're a man who wants to see results. So what are the immediate next steps? Is it all about delivering that first green hydrogen project that then can pave the way for the broader opportunities?

James Mnyupe:
Well, you're right. I do want to see results.

We've all made massive sacrifices to come here and be here and do this. So, we definitely want to see something that we can show for the Namibian people.
Let's start with 2024, right, this is where we find ourselves, Åsa. So before the year is up. If we're lucky, if God is with us, maybe Namibia produces three new products this year, right.

One, we produce locally manufactured hydrogen from the Cleanenergy service station that actually goes into powering locally converted dual fuel hydrogen trucks, right. We're almost there. Two, we should be able to produce our first batch of green ammonia this year, hopefully from Daures, that maybe can actually be used to make ammonia sulphate, which can be used as a fertiliser.
 
Three, the DRI plant in the Erongo region that HyIron is building may produce its first 15,000 tons of DRI. Okay. Now these are all arguably, you know, pilot-type volumes, right. You're not going to become rich by selling these three products, but these are going to be products that did not exist in 2021 when we dreamt up this vision.

And I think it will be massively beneficial for Namibians to be able to see, smell, and touch some of these new products. And I think that begins to pave a pathway to much larger, much more complex objectives, right. So, from 2024, three years from today, if we're super lucky, Hyphen, which is one of the largest projects, has reached FID and is under construction.

The ammonia bunkering hub is built and ready. And we're potentially already importing blue hydrogen to be traded into the African continent through Namibia. And HyIron is producing almost a million tons of DRI. By 2050, we should be manufacturing turbines, electrolysers, we should be doing about 3 million tons of DRI.

We should be exporting at least one million, maybe two million tons of green…and by the way, I'm saying all these things cause they're on a podcast so that I can go re-listen to it in 2030 and see how far really we’ve come… we should be doing two million tons of ammonia at least. Our economy should be significantly more complex than it was in 2021 when we started this whole thing.

And I hope to be able to put up my feet somewhere and sip a piña colada and say I had a small hand in helping my country be a little bit more socially economic equitable than I found it when I was hired to try and help. So roughly that's what's cooking in my head. And I hope, uh, I hope it comes true.

And by the way, I'd be killed by my wife and by my colleague, Theopolina, if I didn't say this. I think by 2030, I should have done my PhD. So, at the next podcast, Åsa and I will hopefully be telling you about my thesis. So that's the other long-term thing that I'd love to be able to do. Thanks.

Åsa Borssén:
You are welcome back in 2030 to talk about your PhD and you're welcome back in 2050 to talk about the broader successes. Exciting times ahead, James.

Thank you so much for joining us and good luck.

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And thank you for listening. 

This Natural Resources podcast was brought to you by Highgrade Media, now part of Ergo Strategy Group. 

Green hydrogen can play a crucial role in the clean energy transition. Namibia has competitive advantage in green hydrogen production. And it is determined to build on it to drive a broader industrialisation process. Ergo Strategy Group is proud to support Namibia on its green industrialisation journey. 

I do hope that you enjoyed the conversation. Make sure to subscribe to our channel on whichever podcast platform you are using. Until next time, so long.