South Africa's energy system is constrained by aging coal infrastructure, rising fossil fuel import dependence, grid capacity limitations, and increasing pressure from international trade partners adopting carbon pricing mechanisms. However, the country holds several strategic advantages for green Power-to-X (PtX) development, including excellent solar and wind resources, land availability, existing Fischer-Tropsch infrastructure, and a mature iron and platinum mining sector. South Africa is thus well positioned to participate in the emerging green PtX markets by leveraging its natural and industrial strengths. As the global hydrogen shipping trade market is projected to experience substantial growth, export opportunities have been identified alongside domestic demand in hard-to-abate sectors such as iron and steel production, as well as aviation and shipping.

The project, led by Fraunhofer IEE in collaboration with SU's Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies (CRSES), evaluates cost-effective and technically viable transformation pathways for the production and utilization of green hydrogen and other PtX products in South Africa, focusing on their role in industrial applications, domestic energy security, and export markets. The research aligns renewable energy expansion with growing domestic and export demand for green electricity, hydrogen, ammonia, and synthetic fuels. The project develops and uses a high-resolution, sector-coupled, open-source energy system model (PyPSA-RSA-Sec) to analyse different PtX adoption scenarios aligned with national policies and plans. Key aims include identifying no-regret investment options, infrastructure requirements, and enabling measures to scale up PtX production and renewable generation capacity. The study also seeks to close knowledge gaps in existing modelling literature, develop open-source tools for future analysis, and support long-term strategic planning for South Africa's evolving energy landscape. To meet future energy and feedstock demands in various sectors across the energy system, different scenarios for renewable energy and PtX expansion are evaluated. As such, the uncertainties of South Africa's energy transition can be explored, trade-offs assessed, and critical enablers identified, while being aligned with its climate and green hydrogen ambitions.