Analysis

Green hydrogen project economics, sourced to the primary document. Every figure carries its origin, its date, and the boundary it was calculated on.

Against 177 MWel in the same period of 2025, and with the average commissioned project falling from 18 MWel to 5 MWel. This is not a slowdown in growth. It is a change of scale downwards, and the diagnosis of why has moved from cost to something harder to fix.

19 Oct 202610 min read6 sources

infrastructurepermittingproject-finance

Spain is fast-tracking 234 km of hydrogen pipeline, and for once the dates attach to named electrolysers

Four sections, €389 million, and an administrative procedure that halves its own deadlines. What makes this worth a project analyst's attention is not the money: it is that a connection date is finally tied to three specific plants, with three specific grant awards behind them.

11 Oct 20266 min read4 sources

regulationrfnbopolicydemand

The regulatory risk just changed sign, and most models are priced for the old one

Until the summer the risk was that Europe would not loosen the RFNBO rules. Since mid-September it is the opposite: that loosening them takes the demand mandate with it. A leaked impact assessment and a letter signed by 170 companies describe the same reversal from both ends.

4 Oct 20269 min read6 sources

demandofftakebankability

What a hydrogen buyer can pay is below USD 2/kg. For steel it is negative.

The offtake conversation usually stops at 'buyers are slow to commit'. The IEA has now computed what they could commit to, and published the boundary it used. The answer changes which projects are worth developing.

30 Aug 20269 min read7 sources

riskcancellationsproject-finance

The biggest cancellation risk is not in your model

The largest single cause of cancelled green hydrogen capacity is not cost, financing or demand. It is the sponsor changing its mind — and no techno-economic model has a line for that.

23 Aug 20269 min read13 sources

costcapexmethodology

The €/kW problem: why the same electrolyser costs €323 and €3,050 per kW

Three published figures for the same alkaline technology, all of them correct, differing by a factor of eight. The gap is not disagreement between analysts — it is the calculation boundary, and almost nobody states it.

16 Aug 20268 min read7 sources

capexcostmanufacturing

A Chinese stack is four to six times cheaper. It moves your LCOH by 3 to 13%.

Two beliefs carry a lot of hydrogen models: that the learning curve will bring costs down, and that Chinese equipment will accelerate it. Both are now testable. The European Commission's own assessment puts the second one at 3–13%, and the factories making the equipment are running at about 10%.

9 Aug 20269 min read10 sources

bankabilityproject-financeofftake

What a lender actually underwrites, and why it is not your LCOH

The most authoritative paper on hydrogen bankability is co-written by an ING energy director. It declines to publish a DSCR threshold, and says doing so would be misleading. What it does quantify is the price of a short contract: roughly 50% equity.

2 Aug 202611 min read12 sources

gridpermittingproject-finance

Your electrolyser is queuing behind 270 GW of batteries and data centres

Project schedules are built around the electrolyser's lead time. In February 2026 Germany's four transmission operators abandoned first-come-first-served because 717 applications for 270 GW had arrived — and electrolysers are named in the same sentence as batteries and data centres.

26 Jul 202610 min read6 sources

regulationrfnbopolicy

The RFNBO deadline that matters is not 2030. It is 1 January 2028.

Everyone quotes the hourly matching rule that starts in 2030. The date that actually decides a project's economics is two years earlier, it is a door rather than a cliff, and walking through it is worth a decade of relief.

19 Jul 202611 min read13 sources

costmethodologylcoh

An LCOH is twelve choices, not one number

Seven techno-economic tools were given identical inputs for the same project. They returned €5.86 to €8.71 per kilogram. No published standard prescribes an LCOH methodology — so here is the checklist, and what each major publisher actually chooses.

12 Jul 202613 min read18 sources

transportcostinfrastructure

The hydrogen pipeline cost everyone quotes is four years old and rests on a footnote

€0.11–0.21 per kilogram per 1,000 km is the number in every transport slide. Its own source says, in footnote 23, that it assumes 5,000 hours a year of utilisation — and has not restated it since April 2022, through a 47% rise in steel pipe prices.

5 Jul 202610 min read11 sources

storagecostproject-finance

Three countries hold 77% of Europe's hydrogen storage potential. Yours may not be one.

The storage line in a hydrogen model is usually one number. It is not a number. It is a question about the rock under the site, a question about how often the cavern is cycled, and a nine-year permitting timeline that does not fit inside a project schedule.

28 Jun 20269 min read4 sources

Editorial standard

Every number names its source, the publication it came from, and the date of the data — not the date of this page.
Any cost figure declares its calculation boundary before the number, because a €/kW without a boundary is not comparable to anything.
Pages carry a version and a revision history. Figures are corrected in place and the change is recorded, never edited silently.
Where a source is single, secondary or paywalled, it is labelled as such so you know what you are citing on.

Last updated 19 Oct 2026.

46 megawatts. That is what Europe connected in the first half of 2026.