Europe Delays Hydrogen Pipelines While Volvo Reinvents the Engine—With Hydrogen

In this episode of The Hydrogen Podcast, host Paul Rodden unpacks two major stories that reveal the tension—and opportunity—in hydrogen’s global rollout:

🇪🇺 Europe’s Hydrogen Infrastructure Faces Multi-Year Delays
🇸🇪 Volvo Brings Back the Internal Combustion Engine—Fueled by Hydrogen

You’ll learn:

🔹 Why Europe’s €340B hydrogen vision is stalling amid red tape and regulatory chaos
 🔹 What the delay of H2Med and other pipelines means for the global hydrogen economy
 🔹 How Volvo’s hydrogen-ICE engine slashes CO₂-equivalent emissions by 98%
 🔹 Why this approach may be the cheapest and fastest route to hydrogen-powered mobility
🔹 How legacy manufacturing infrastructure is getting a second life—with zero-carbon fuel

We break down the economic, regulatory, and technical crosswinds shaping hydrogen’s future in mobility and infrastructure—revealing where the true bottlenecks lie, and who might leap ahead as global hydrogen leadership is up for grabs.

Transcript

Today we’re taking on two of the most thought-provoking stories this month: the growing pains of Europe’s hydrogen infrastructure roll-out, and Volvo’s reinvention of the internal combustion engine—this time fueled by hydrogen.  All of this on todays hydrogen podcast.

Let’s kick off with Europe’s hydrogen infrastructure timeline and what that means for global energy markets and investors.

This week, Enagas CEO Arturo Gonzalo confirmed what many in the industry have suspected: Europe’s large-scale hydrogen pipeline network faces a two-to-three-year delay across the continent. While Enagas still expects Spain’s own network—spanning 2,600 kilometers and costing more than 4 billion euros—to be operational by 2030, broader European interconnections like the H2Med corridor will not fully materialize until at least 203245.

The reasons run deeper than construction logistics. Regulatory complexity and permitting delays are top culprits. Projects that must comply with the European Union’s strict criteria for “renewable fuels of non-biological origin” are tangled in bureaucracy, often requiring years of multi-level approvals especially in places like Italy. Furthermore, financing hasn’t kept pace with political ambition. Despite the EU dedicating between €50 and €75 billion for hydrogen electrolysis capacity and promising as much as €340 billion for supporting renewable power projects, actual funds are hindered by slow, complex approval processes—sometimes taking up to two years to secure a grant or subsidy67.

The financial fallout is visible. By the end of 2024, nearly 29 gigawatts—approximately €20–30 billion worth—of planned hydrogen capacity were either canceled or stalled. About 20% of the project pipeline has been abandoned, with only 17% of current projects likely to make it to completion without drastic intervention. The list of cancellations includes BP’s 500-megawatt HyGreen Teesside venture and high-profile export pipelines like Equinor’s €3 billion Norway-Germany link178. Demand uncertainty makes matters worse, as many projects struggle to secure long-term buyers willing to pay a premium for hydrogen produced via electrolysis, CCUS-enabled methane, or methane pyrolysis. Without robust offtake agreements, developers can’t unlock funding, and the pipeline infrastructure itself becomes financially risky.

Costs are also spiraling; in the Netherlands, for example, the state-backed operator Gasunie recently admitted that delays have pushed the national hydrogen grid’s price tag to €3.8 billion, with completion pushed back from the early 2030s to 20333. The classic chicken-or-egg dilemma persists: producers want pipelines in place before they commit to major projects, while pipeline developers require firm hydrogen production before investing at scale17.

In summary: Europe’s hydrogen infrastructure build-out stands at a crossroads. Without concerted regulatory simplification, streamlined permitting, and demand guarantees, meeting the 2030 target of 20 million tons of hydrogen—10 million domestic, 10 million imported—remains wishful thinking. Economic uncertainty and policy gridlock could shrink hydrogen’s share in transport and heating far below original projections, risking Europe’s leadership position in the global hydrogen transition.

While Europe’s infrastructure dreams hit turbulence, Volvo is engineering a very different path forward for hydrogen in mobility—and it doesn’t involve fuel cells. In a bold move, Volvo has revived the internal combustion engine, this time reimagined to run on hydrogen. Their new “Hydrogen-ICE” engine, built on advanced direct injection and turbocharging, reportedly achieves a remarkable 98% reduction in CO₂-equivalent emissions compared to conventional hydrocarbons[Forbes article context].

Volvo’s engineering team claims that the hydrogen combustion engine matches or exceeds the thermal efficiency of current gasoline engines while maintaining reliability and rapid refueling—two major consumer pain points with battery electric vehicles and earlier hydrogen technologies. Critically, the new architecture is designed for mass manufacturability: it leverages existing production lines and component supply chains, meaning the capital expenditure to pivot from hydrocarbons to hydrogen in Volvo’s factories could be contained to incremental investments, rather than requiring wholesale retooling.

Volvo’s economic reasoning is clear. Instead of betting solely on fuel cell electric vehicles, which require entirely new technological ecosystems and supply chains, a hydrogen-powered combustion engine can make use of already-sunk costs in ICE manufacturing, workforce expertise, and maintenance infrastructure. By sidestepping the need for critical battery minerals—often tied to supply chain volatility and resource-intensive mining—Volvo’s approach offers both a hedge against battery price inflation and an environmental benefit by supporting a lower-emissions production footprint.

On the technical side, addressing the challenges of flame speed, pre-ignition, and efficient hydrogen-air mixing has been key to enabling stable and efficient combustion. Early demonstrations have shown promising results in heavy transport prototypes, with light-duty trials expected in the coming years.

Volvo’s initiative is also designed to capitalize on government incentives aimed at decarbonizing transport fleets, without depending on the still-maturing hydrogen fuel cell infrastructure, which remains costly and underdeveloped in most European urban corridors.

Zooming out, these two stories capture the crosswinds buffeting hydrogen’s market path in 2025.

On one hand, Europe’s hydrogen infrastructure roll-out is hampered by upfront costs—now regularly exceeding several billion euros per country—alongside regulatory friction and slow funding that have left project developers, utilities, and industrial partners in limbo. The ongoing uncertainty deters private capital, limits the scale and speed of pipeline expansion, and risks diminishing public enthusiasm. To unlock the next wave of hydrogen projects, governments must harmonize standards, accelerate permitting, and anchor demand through clear market signals such as mandatory quotas or long-term offtake agreements.

On the other hand, manufacturers like Volvo are demonstrating how technological flexibility can lower hydrogen’s end-use adoption costs. By adapting well-understood ICE technology for hydrogen, automakers can jump-start the decarbonization of transport with manageable investment while infrastructure continues to build out. In cost terms, every hydrogen-powered ICE truck or bus that utilizes legacy manufacturing capability circumvents the labor and capex spike of switching entire fleets to electric drivetrains.

What’s clear from this month’s headlines is that hydrogen’s trajectory will ultimately be won or lost at the junction of economics and regulation. For Europe, delivering on even a fraction of its 2030 ambitions will require not only tens of billions in additional funding, but also bold market reforms and price guarantees—measures some have likened to a “hydrogen feed-in tariff.” For transport OEMs, hydrogen combustion may offer a near-term bridge as the pipeline and refueling network mature, especially for hard-to-electrify sectors still dependent on hydrocarbons.

Europe’s hydrogen ambitions remain immense. The coming two to three years will decide if the continent’s infrastructure build-out can catch up to early promises, or if delays and rising costs will hand leadership to more agile players abroad. Meanwhile, Volvo’s innovation reminds us: flexibility and incrementalism in technology adoption can sometimes outpace revolution—especially when the economics work and regulatory support aligns. Keep your eyes on the numbers, the infrastructure, and the policy levers. As hydrogen moves from vision to reality, the stakes for industry, investors, and the climate have never been higher.

Alright, that’s it for me, everyone.  If you have a second, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a good review on whatever platform you listen to. Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google, YouTube, etc. That would be a tremendous help to the show. And as always if you ever have any feedback, you are welcome to email me directly at info@thehydrogepodcast.com. So until next time, keep your eyes up and honor one another.