Hyphen reacts to ‘secrecy’ of hydrogen deal

Hyphen Hydrogen Energy CEO Marco Raffinetti says it would be to the detriment of Namibia’s competitive advantage if the green hydrogen agreement between his company and the Namibian government was made public.

Raffinetti also cited intellectual property rights as another reason the agreement cannot be made public – saying this doesn’t happen anywhere in the world.

"Please understand that it is not standard in any country in the world for agreements such as this to be made public," he said last week.

In the dark

The agreement for the N$192 billion green hydrogen project, in which government intends to spend billions of dollars to acquire a 24% stake, has been a subject of much consternation – with parliament among state organs claiming to be in the dark about the deal.

Green hydrogen resorts under State House, leaving the parliamentary standing committee on natural resources without oversight powers over the country’s largest post-independence investment project.

In June, committee chairperson Tjekero Tweya remarked in parliament: "This is a natural resource of the country, and as a committee responsible for natural resources, last year we saw it as our prime responsibility to get more information about this much-talked-about matter - and the committee was guided in terms of [its] duties.

"We invited the ministry of mines and energy to Droombos, just here outside Windhoek, and to our disappointment, the ministry did not shed more light on the matter. They were not in charge of the project. We were informed that it is being driven from State House,” Tweya said at the time.

"There is a council with a commissioner, and that structure did not necessarily fall under the ambits of the ministry over which the committee has oversight, but the fact is that [green hydrogen] is a natural resource," he added, before he was told by Swapo secretary general Sophia Shaningwa to keep quiet.

"You are deeply mentioning the Office of the President and State House, and I am afraid that you are getting too much," Shaningwa told him.

Protecting intellectual property

But Raffinetti, commenting on the perceived secrecy for the first time, said the agreement cost Hyphen and the Namibian government a massive €6 million (over N$120 million at yesterday’s exchange rate) to develop and, therefore, cannot be released into the public domain just like that.

"This agreement has probably cost the government and Hyphen over [€6 million] to develop. This represents an enormous amount of intellectual property of Hyphen and government," he said on Friday.

"It would be to the detriment of Namibia’s competitive advantage to have this information available to other countries looking to compete with Namibia given the commercially sensitive information contained in the agreement."

Raffinetti underlined that a lot of countries are trying to copy what Namibia has done regarding green hydrogen – saying the country is now one of the world’s leaders in this new sector.

“I appreciate that there is massive interest in the project, but I would please request enquiring minds to consider the implications of requests for confidential information to be disclosed given this reality,” said.

“In the coming weeks we will be launching the socio economic development framework for the project together with government and I think this will go a long way to answering some of the questions.”