During the Focus Day "Hydrogen Production in Central Asia and Caspian" in Almaty as part of the 10th annual Downstream Central Asia and Caspian conference in Almaty the Globuc team had an opportunity to talk to Azamat Kozhanov, Managing Director of Kazakh Invest. Kazakh Invest is actively involved in developing the sector in Kazakhstan both working with investors and the state insitutions.
The interview was given in Russian, find below the full translation to English.

Hydrogen-producing companies have been operating in Kazakhstan for a long time and have been successfully integrated into the production process of petrochemical plants. Yet here we are talking about gray hydrogen.

Today at the conference, as you saw, not only blue hydrogen production prospects were discussed, but an emphasis was placed on green hydrogen. Potential future projects and potential future deals are currently being discussed at the governmental level and in the investment community.

We are only at the initial stage of the development of fully-fledged hydrogen energy. Both the legislative framework and the physical infrastructure necessary for the implementation of major projects are still in their infancy.

The main task at the moment for our government is to understand how realistic the plans for the implementation of large export-oriented megaprojects are.

We see that various countries around the world are now investing heavily in the development of technologies for the efficient production of green hydrogen, in particular, to reduce the cost of production. As a country, we are trying to integrate and potentially provide our offer in the market at a time when this market is being formed.

The green hydrogen market is not that big, but the main investments in development and future production are focused on the green hydrogen industry.

Today at the conference we heard a very interesting presentation from a large company, Topsoe, where they have already announced the construction of a plant that is in full swing and the potential production of 500-megawatt electrolyzers, which are precisely the thing that will allow large megaprojects to be competitive..

Technologies are changing, and technological development is proceeding very quickly. Accordingly, before the large projects under development in Kazakhstan reach their maturity, there will probably already be technologies that minimise the impact of those restrictions that exist now, which directly affect the cost of production.