Green hydrogen is being prioritised as a critical pathway for global decarbonisation and industrialisation in the Global South. However, its role in a just transition remains uncertain amid concerns about extractivism, uneven development, and harmful socio-ecological impacts. This study focuses on finance as a governance structure of new technologies to understand its role in green hydrogen development and the implications for a just transition in South Africa. An instrumental case study of green hydrogen development in South Africa draws on primary and secondary sources to examine how justice is envisioned in the green hydrogen proposition, how its development is reconfiguring South Africa's energy system, and how financing mechanisms are conditioning development to shape directionality. The analysis demonstrates how justice as envisioned diverges from how it is realised, as finance structures processes in ways that create epistemic hierarchies and perpetuate exclusionary and extractive dynamics. Guiding the directionality of just transitions requires either weakening finance as a governance structure or redistributing the power exercised by actors through its mechanisms. Future research could build on this analysis by identifying cases that show how finance's influence has been weakened or redistributed in Global South transitions.
Amanda-Leigh O'Connell (Thu,) studied this question.