The Documentary Podcast · BBC World Service

Namibia’s hydrogen superpower dream

·26 min·1 clip

Hyphen's ESG director Toni Boykes responds to the 'greed rather than green' challenge by saying: 'For the first, and I have to say, goddamn time, we have a resource that can't be exported — we cannot export the sun nor the wind.'

1. BBC World Service's The Documentary Podcast examines Namibia's hydrogen superpower dream through Lüderitz and the nearby diamond ruins of Kolmanskop. 2. Johannes Dell reports from Lüderitz, while former mayor Phil Balhau, youth activists Lucille Adams and Junior Mutalini, botanist Hato Kohlberg, ocean educator Neil Shaw, and Hyphen ESG lead Toni Boykes explain why the project matters. 3. The episode asks whether Namibia's green hydrogen plan can become a real industrial future or another boom that leaves the town behind. 4. Dell opens at Grasplats, a crumbling railway station in the Namibian desert, and links Zacharias Liwala's diamond discovery to Lüderitz's earlier boom. 5. A flight over uninhabited desert and a warning about Lüderitz's fierce winds underline how isolated the town remains. 6. Kolmanskop is described as one of the wealthiest towns in the world in the early 1900s, with a theatre, bowling alley, tram, and even ice for champagne. 7. Phil Balhau says Lüderitz became a sleepy fishing town again and explains that Buchters are people forged by a tightly woven, self-reliant community. 8. Balhau also says young people face unemployment, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse, and that many residents keep asking the mayor for opportunities that do not exist. 9. The old power station has been redeveloped into the Lüderitz Maritime Museum, and Dell uses it to introduce the scale of the hydrogen proposal. 10. Hyphen's plan is presented as more than $10 billion in investment, 3.75 gigawatts of renewable power, 15,000 construction jobs, and 3,000 permanent jobs by the end of 2028. 11. Dell compares his 170-watt exercise-bike output to the project's planned capacity and jokes that it would take 20 million people to match it. 12. Lucille Adams and Junior Mutalini describe growing up around fish, kelp, and oysters, while saying the hydrogen project brings mixed feelings and repeated meetings without action. 13. The transcript raises the question of consent, asking how people can benefit from a project if they do not understand what is coming. 14. In Windhoek, Zivai Chiguvare of the Namibia Green Hydrogen Research Institute explains electrolysis, green hydrogen, and the need for renewable electricity. 15. Chiguvare says desalinated seawater could supply the project, but brine from desalination may disturb fish and livelihoods if it is not handled carefully. 16. Hato Kohlberg warns that the Zaukeib National Park, formerly the Sperrgebiet, is a biodiversity hotspot with many endemic and near-endemic plant species. 17. Neil Shaw of the Namibian Foundation for the Conservation of Seabirds says port expansion could increase vessel traffic, noise pollution, and pressure on penguins and other coastal birds. 18. Toni Boykes of Hyphen argues that the project should be developed where the wind and solar resource is strongest and says environmental and social impact assessments are part of the process. 19. The tone is field-reporting and interview-led, with Dell moving between desert, town, laboratory, coast, and protected habitat. 20. People interested in Namibia's energy transition and coastal conservation will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting a short business briefing may skip it.

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