Abstract
Hydrogen is a relevant purpose that South Africa sets as priority of renewable technologies in a bid to reduce the country’s oil and gas dependence and consequently reduction of its heavily carbon emission. Possessor worldwide of almost 75% of the platinum, South Africa sees the opportunity to play a new role in decades coming with the development of hydrogen economy highlighting positive impacts in socio-economical and ecological aspects. Platinum is a best catalyst metal to be used as electrode to the production of hydrogen by water electrolysis with no carbon emission. This paper examines the sustainability and technological development of hydrogen production for fuel cells technologies processes, the input-output energy comparison involved by utilizing life cycle inventories in which the energy and raw material consumption and different types of emissions related to a specific product are measured, analyzed and summoned over the life cycle’s entire products from an environmental viewpoint.