Bloomberg NEF's Martin Tengler discusses the shift from hydrogen hype to economic reality, explaining that only 0.3% of announced clean hydrogen capacity is operational. The podcast identifies viable niches like existing industrial uses and emerging opportunities in China and India, while cautioning against hydrogen in transport and power generation.
Summarized by Podsumo
Only 0.3% of announced 230 million tons of clean hydrogen capacity is operational; stalled projects now triple the committed capacity.
China and India show potential upside with low costs and strong policy support, unlike the EU and US facing delays and policy weakening.
Hydrogen's viable uses are limited to existing industrial hydrogen demand (refining, fertilizers, chemicals), steelmaking, and long-duration energy storage.
The EU's renewable fuel mandates are largely ignored, with only 13 of 27 member states implementing them and high costs (7x fossil jet fuel for synthetic aviation fuel).
Oil majors like Exxon and BP have canceled or suspended major blue hydrogen projects, while Shell continues with some.
"In Hydrogen there was a little bit of an oversupply of talking about clean hydrogen but that clean hydrogen as actually never arrived — in the Phil Collins metaphor it would be people talked about how great this Phil Collins is but they've actually never heard a song."
"Martin Tengler"
"The laws that they cannot cheat are the laws of physics. ... If you mandate the use of hydrogen or the production of hydrogen for sectors that would be better served with other technologies, most notably electrification, then you're just setting yourself up for very high costs."
"Martin Tengler"