In the past year, there’s definitely been a slowdown in the kind of mega-sized, mega-billion-dollar hydrogen projects that used to regularly dominate the weekly headlines.

That being said, if you thought such grandiose announcements had gone for good, then be aware that a few countries obviously missed that memo.

Egypt, for example, has just “launched a project to build the world's largest green hydrogen plant”, “at a cost of $17 billion”.

If built, it “will be located on an area of ​​127 square kilometres” in South Sinai and “produce up to 400,000 tons of green hydrogen per year”. Electricity will be fully renewable and “independent of the electricity grid”. By “using solar energy during the day and stored hydropower at night”, the electrolysers should be able to run continuously.

Naturally, such a project won’t happen all at once, but in phases: “the first phase is expected to be completed in 2030, the second in 2033 and the third in 2035”.

Head further west along the north African coast and you’ll eventually arrive in Morocco, whose government has “approved MAD 319 billion (USD 32.7bn/EUR 30.3bn) worth of green hydrogen projects for use in the production of ammonia, industrial fuel and green steel”.

This won’t be one, but “six projects proposed by five developers”. They have been selected “by a committee responsible for Morocco’s Hydrogen Offer” and will now enter negotiations. Agreements after that could lead each project to the offer of “up to 30,000 ha (74,132 acres) of land” on which to build their facilities.

The companies include US-based Ortus, Spanish Acciona and German wind turbine maker Nordex, “through their ORNX consortium” and with a plan to produce green ammonia. Other team-ups are those between the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company and Spanish petroleum company Moeve, to “produce ammonia and industrial fuel”, and two Chinese firms (UEG and China Three Gorges) for ammonia.

Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power will make green steel, while Morocco’s own Nareva will produce ammonia, fuel and steel.

Elsewhere in the ‘MENA’ (Middle East and North Africa) region is Oman, which has long had its own big hydrogen production plans.

As a reminder, in recent years “eight consortia have been awarded land blocks in central and southern Oman to develop large-scale green hydrogen production… to produce at least 1 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030”.