On an afternoon in March in the middle of the world’s oldest desert, Johannes Michels looks out at an array of solar panels, the size of 40 football fields, that stretches toward a ridge of jagged peaks between the ochre-colored sand and a cloudless blue sky. Inside a building to Michels’s left sits a 12-megawatt electrolyzer—a machine resembling two giant AA batteries that is designed to split water into its two component parts, H₂ and O. Behind him is the desert factory’s key piece of proprietary tech: a rotating kiln in which the hydrogen gas from that water is mixed with iron ore to create a pure form of iron, the main ingredient in steel.

Factories have used fossil fuels to process iron ore for three centuries, and the climate has paid a heavy price: According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the steel industry today accounts for 8% of carbon dioxide emissions. Purifying the ore involves extracting iron that is bound to oxygen, and “removing the bond between the iron and oxygen requires a massive amount of energy,” says Michels, the 39-year-old CEO of HyIron, the startup behind the project.

But it turns out there is a less carbon-­intensive alternative: using hydrogen to extract the iron. Unlike coal or natural gas, which release carbon dioxide as a by-product, this process, Michels explains, releases water. And if the hydrogen itself is “green”—meaning it’s made through renewable-­powered electrolysis rather than the conventional technique of mixing natural gas and steam—the climate impact of the entire process will be minimal.

If even a fraction of this production comes to pass, it will give Namibia’s economy a major boost. But it is a gamble. Green hydrogen technology is still in its infancy, and long-term demand for its products remains uncertain. Pursuing a technology that isn’t yet commercially established, some critics fear, could strain government resources and distract from more urgent priorities, including the persistence of hunger and a domestic power grid that reaches only half of Namibia’s households. This is especially the case with the largest project under development, along the country’s southern coast, which will require at least $10 billion to get off the ground, a figure nearly as big as Namibia’s GDP today. That venture is contentious for environmental reasons, too: Under current plans, most of its infrastructure will be built inside a national park in a location Namibia’s top environmental watchdog calls the “most sensitive ecosystem in southern Africa.”

“Given the small country that we are, we’re risking quite a lot entering into this global race,” says Ronny Dempers, executive director of the Namibia Development Trust, which advocates for community-based management of natural resources.

Adding to the uncertainty is the death last year of Namibian president Hage Geingob, the hydrogen strategy’s chief political backer. The new president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who took office in March, hails from the same political party, but multiple people familiar with her thinking told me she’s keener on developing oil and natural gas.