Analysis
Hydrogen News
Short notes connecting a policy or market development to what it actually means for project economics - written to be useful, not to break news. Each note states the public source it draws on; commentary and interpretation are our own.
- PolicyAugust 4, 2026· 6 min read
The EU's additionality rules are stricter on paper than in practice - here's the gap
Delegated Regulation 2023/1184 sets out temporal and geographic correlation rules for renewable hydrogen. Most project financing decks we review still model around a looser reading than regulators are likely to accept post-2028.
The additionality framework was designed to stop renewable hydrogen from simply drawing down the existing clean grid mix and calling it green. In practice, the monthly-matching transition period running to 2029 gives developers more flexibility than the eventual hourly-matching regime will allow.
For clients raising capital now, the risk isn't the current rules - it's underwriting a 2030s offtake contract against a compliance regime that tightens mid-contract. We walk through this timeline explicitly in every RFNBO-eligibility memo we write.
- PolicyJune 19, 2026· 5 min read
Reading the European Hydrogen Bank auction results as a signal, not a scoreboard
Auction clearing prices tell you less about 'the cost of hydrogen' than about which projects had bankable offtake and permits already lined up. That's the more useful read for a client deciding where to focus development effort.
Every auction round produces headlines about the clearing premium per kilogram. The more useful number for a developer is which project archetypes actually won - consistently, projects with an anchor industrial offtaker and a permitted site clear ahead of pure merchant plays.
That has a direct implication for sequencing: secure offtake and permitting risk down before optimising electrolyzer procurement, not after.
- MarketMay 11, 2026· 4 min read
What the tracker's FID gap tells us about the pipeline-to-delivery ratio
Cross-referencing our project tracker's status history against original announcement dates shows the familiar pattern: capacity-weighted announcements dwarf capacity that has actually reached construction.
This isn't a new observation - IEA's Global Hydrogen Review has flagged it for several editions running - but having it live in a project-by-project tracker rather than an annual PDF makes it usable for deal screening, not just a talking point.
The practical takeaway for clients: treat 'announced capacity' as a ceiling, not a forecast, and weight toward projects with a named offtaker and a status history showing real construction milestones.
- PolicyMarch 27, 2026· 5 min read
45V and the transatlantic pull on project sponsors
US production tax credit economics remain a live comparison point for European sponsors deciding where to allocate next-round capital, even where underlying resource economics favour Europe.
A production tax credit is a fundamentally different instrument to a contract-for-difference or fixed premium: it rewards actual output rather than de-risking a fixed cost gap, which changes how a developer should think about utilisation and dispatch strategy, not just headline subsidy value.
For European clients with US options on the table, the right comparison is levelised cost after policy support under realistic utilisation, not the headline per-kilogram figures usually quoted.
- MarketFebruary 9, 2026· 4 min read
Steel, not heating, is where near-term hydrogen demand has to come from
The political retreat from hydrogen home heating in several member states is a feature of realistic sequencing, not a setback for the sector - demand-side policy is converging on hard-to-abate industry instead.
Direct reduced iron (DRI) steelmaking is the demand case with the clearest economics: it doesn't compete with cheaper decarbonisation options the way building heat does, and offtake can be contracted at industrial scale with a small number of counterparties.
Clients building a market-entry case should expect policy support to concentrate further on industry and heavy transport, and treat announcements of retail/residential hydrogen use with real scepticism.
- TechnologyDecember 15, 2025· 5 min read
The European Hydrogen Backbone's real constraint is permitting, not steel
Repurposing existing gas pipeline is technically the easy part. Cross-border permitting alignment between transmission system operators is the more binding constraint on the proposed 2030 backbone timeline.
Pipeline repurposing is genuinely cheaper and faster than new-build - the engineering literature on this is fairly settled. What isn't settled is synchronised permitting and cost-allocation methodology across the TSOs whose sections need to connect for the corridor to function end-to-end.
For clients with infrastructure exposure, the useful diligence question isn't 'is the technology proven' but 'which specific cross-border sections have an agreed cost-allocation methodology today'.
- PolicyOctober 22, 2025· 3 min read
Stop calling it 'green hydrogen' in a term sheet - use the delegated act definition
Colour terminology is useful shorthand in conversation and actively unhelpful in a financing document, where what matters is which specific EU or national legal definition a project needs to satisfy.
'Green hydrogen' has no single legal definition; RFNBO status under the Renewable Energy Directive is a specific, auditable standard with its own additionality, temporal and geographic correlation tests. A project can be broadly 'green' in the colloquial sense and still fail RFNBO eligibility on a technicality.
We now open every eligibility memo by naming the specific legal standard in play before any colour language, and recommend clients do the same in investor materials.
- TechnologyAugust 30, 2025· 4 min read
Why ammonia keeps winning the hydrogen-carrier debate, and what that means for import strategy
Liquid hydrogen shipping keeps losing out to ammonia on practical grounds, which has a direct implication for which import corridors and port investments are worth underwriting first.
The energy penalty of converting hydrogen to ammonia and back is real - roughly a third of the energy content - but it's still preferable to liquid hydrogen's -253°C storage requirement for most long-haul shipping routes.
Import strategy work we do for clients increasingly defaults to ammonia as the base case carrier for anything beyond short-sea distances, reserving liquid hydrogen and other carriers for niche, shorter-distance cases.