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Namibia Jots Down Green Hydrogen Plan

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House in Aus Blick

House in Aus Blick

All of these tools provide invaluable insight, helping teams understand why a business is performing the way it is. More than ever, technology is helping businesses predict the future. Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are already being utilized by some technology vendors to help alert a business to any potential issues immediately. For example, some accounting solutions can comb through data and score transactions for the likelihood of an error or conflict and flag transactions that are outliers. Correcting issues as they come up enables firms to consistently have a clear financial picture, freeing up more time to focus on business strategy.

All of these tools provide invaluable insight, helping teams understand why a business is performing the way it is. More than ever, technology is helping businesses predict the future. Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are already being utilized by some technology vendors to help alert a business to any potential issues immediately. For example, some accounting solutions can comb through data and score transactions for the likelihood of an error or conflict and flag transactions that are outliers. Correcting issues as they come up enables firms to consistently have a 3. Greater Collaboration Technology certainly helps ease frustrations and increase efficiency, but it also encourages more effective communication and greater collaboration.

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Employees can be more productive knowing they are working off the latest version of a document or have the most up-todate numbers for a project. Teams in the field and back-office benefit from these streamlined and automated processes. It also makes collaboration easier with all project stakeholders, including subcontractors and vendors. Having this level of control and confidence in project workflows is crucial as businesses grapple with challenges, such as disruptions to the supply chain, which can often lead to projects taking longer and costing more in the process.

Technology can foster a more collaborative environment not only among teams, businesses and projects, but also across the entire industry. Many leading technology providers recognize that it benefits everyone when they make it as easy as possible for their solutions to seamlessly integrate with those of other providers in the industry. They understand the need for technology vendors to work together, with many supporting open application programming interfaces (APIs) and pushing for a universal construction integration platform. Adopting a universal integration platform would ensure vendors could integrate with new solutions down the road, as data would be universally configured so that it could be translated to any platform, system or application to fit the ever-changing needs of the industry.

The Construction Progress Coalition (CPC), a nonprofit organization uniting architecture, engineering and construction professionals, technology solution providers and their governing organizations, is pushing for a shared language to define project interoperability standards. It is also working to transform the future of digital project delivery through a common data exchange (CDX), which would use a standard format for storing and exchanging information. Once a CDX becomes an industry standard, data could easily be imported and exported between different systems, achieving greater collaboration across the industry.

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Scaling up the generation of renewable energy is a prerequisite for cheap and competitive green hydrogen production in Namibia. This is according to the government's strategy which includes the establishment of a sustainable green hydrogen farm in the country. The programme is expected to generate up to 70 megawatt of energy. Green hydrogen is a form of energy that is created by using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.

With the world poised to produce green energy, Namibia is also pushing this agenda. This green energy concept is championed by James Mnyupe, the presidential adviser on the economy, and is also supported by minister of finance Iipumbu Shiimi, who sold Namibia's position to the world in early June 2021 in a Bloomberg television interview.

The draft strategy was prepared by Hatch, an engineering, procurement, and construction management company. It aims to help Namibia decarbonise and build a hydrogen economy by leveraging the country's abundant solar and wind resources to generate the world's cheapest green hydrogen. “Renewable energy farms can be utilised to produce green hydrogen for industry and domestic users to displace diesel usage and create a hydrogen economy,” the strategy reads. Thereafter, the economy can be expanded to form a green hydrogen ecosystem and widen Namibia's reach in other value chains, it explains.

Once this system is fully scaled up, it will result in Namibia becoming a net exporter of hydrogen. The hydrogen value chain is reliant and dependent on renewable and hydropower production to facilitate the production of the gas through a process called electrolysis.

The produced green hydrogen can be used as a clean fuel for mobility in trucks, trains and cars. In Namibia's case, hydrogen can replace diesel, which is the main fuel used for power generation in mining and metals, and other heavy industries, the strategy suggests. Moreover, as governments start turning their Paris Agreement commitments into more explicit targets and legislated objectives, hydrogen-energy production can be one of Namibia's strategies. “This is Namibia and its efforts to meet its climatechange commitments by prioritising the decarbonisation of polluting industrial sectors,” the strategy reads.

The document indicated that Namibia could leverage its world-class renewable energy resources to reduce and consequently eliminate energy imports, which have steadily increased since 2 000. This would also reduce oil consumption, which has been Namibia's greatest source of emissions for the past two decades, as well as the country's energy dependence, read the strategy.

The projects will be implemented through a public-private partnership as this approach guarantees investments in the public sector and more effective public resource management. The collaboration also ensures risks are optimally balanced between the private and public sector partners, and allows the government to leverage the technical and operational expertise of the privatesector partner, the strategy reads. This is part of the interim renewable energy feed-in tariff programme, which is designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy technologies by offering long-term contracts to renewable energy for independent power producers.

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