Why Hydrogen Is More Than Carbon: What Project Cancellations Are Missing

In this episode of The Hydrogen Podcast, Paul Rodden takes a fresh look at the wave of green hydrogen project cancellations that have shaken headlines and investor confidence.

Rather than panic over missed climate targets, we dig into what really matters:

• ✅ The 29 GW of projects stalled—and what that tells us
• 🔋 Why hydrogen’s energy density outperforms batteries
• 💡 The truth about hydrogen as a multi-sector energy integrator
• 🌬️ The health and economic benefits no one is talking about—like NOx, SOx, and PM2.5 reductions
• 💰 Why smart deployment beats megaproject hype, and where the ROI is actually strongest

From Singapore to Germany to the American Midwest, we explore examples of smart, scalable hydrogen strategies that are delivering value today—not just in emissions avoided, but in real-world health and energy benefits.

Let’s shift the narrative—from fear of failure to a better understanding of hydrogen’s true role in our energy future.

Transcript

Today we’re dedicating the show to a topic dominating industry news and boardrooms alike: the recent wave of green hydrogen project cancellations and what this actually means for the future of energy—and what it should mean. While the prevailing narrative is one of climate anxiety and missed emissions targets, I want to turn this on its head and focus on what really matters: hydrogen’s unique efficiency, reliability, and the health benefits that often get overlooked. We’ll bring in the numbers, highlight overlooked economic realities, and discuss why emissions—although important—shouldn’t be the only reason to embrace hydrogen.  All of this on todays hydrogen podcast.

Let’s start with the facts. Over the past year, the hydrogen sector has seen a chilling number of project cancellations and delays. Analysts now estimate that nearly 29 gigawatts worth of green hydrogen projects have been abandoned or stalled across EMEA and the U.S., with tens of billions of dollars in electrolyzer, infrastructure, and offtake contracts either shelved or indefinitely delayed. Major developments, including BP’s HyGreen Teesside and Equinor’s Norway-to-Germany export pipeline, are among the highest profile casualties. A recent industry tracker suggests up to 20% of announced capacity is now off the table, and only 17% of projects in the pipeline are considered likely to reach completion on time without dramatic policy or market intervention.

The talking heads in the media, and even a fair number of regulators, argue that these cancellations are disastrous for net zero, potentially pushing decarbonization timelines out by a decade or more. Here’s the thing: framing the rise or fall of hydrogen purely in terms of carbon quotas was always a dangerously narrow lens.

Let’s take a step back. The real reason the world needs hydrogen isn’t just to swap out coal or oil and tick a box for CO₂. Hydrogen is a uniquely efficient vector for storing, transporting, and dispatching energy where—and when—it’s needed most. In industrial clusters, backup power, seasonal energy storage, or any application requiring high density and rapid response, hydrogen simply does what batteries can’t.

Compare the energy density of hydrogen—about 33 kWh per kg, significantly higher than even the best lithium-ion chemistries. In grid-scale storage, hydrogen allows you to bank gigawatt-hours of renewable surplus and deliver it later, over days or even months. In high-heat manufacturing, steel, fertilizer production, and long-haul transport, the alternatives (electrification, conventional batteries) are far less technically viable and often uneconomic. Numerous techno-economic analyses show hydrogen as the only pathway that economically enables decarbonization of “hard-to-abate” sectors—often at lower integrated system cost per unit of service than the high-wire act of grid overbuild and mass-battery deployment.

Even when natural gas prices spiked over $30/MMBtu in Europe during 2022, green hydrogen produced directly at point of use (especially via “behind-the-fence” electrolyzers powered by curtailed renewables) offered a clear cost advantage on a $/MWh basis over grid power. And with electrolyzer costs still falling—recent tenders in the Middle East and Spain as low as $1.40 per kilogram, or below $40/MWh—the economics are improving for targeted, not universal, hydrogen adoption.

Hydrogen’s value proposition is its flexibility and its power as a multi-sector, multi-energy integrator—not just a decarbonizer.

But let’s address emissions. It’s true that green hydrogen offers a pathway to zero-CO₂ fuels, especially when produced from electrolysis with renewables or nuclear. Still, the short-term fixation on carbon accounting misses the real public health and economic win: the dramatic reduction of combustion-related air pollutants.

What matters for our cities, our lungs, and healthcare costs is not just the invisible CO₂, but the cocktail of harmful byproducts from burning hydrocarbons—namely, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and dangerous fine particulates known as PM2.5.

Let’s put some numbers on this:

·       NOx and SOx emissions from traditional power generation and diesel vehicles contribute to $100–150 billion in health costs per year in the U.S. alone, according to recent EPA and CDC studies. PM2.5 alone is linked with 100,000+ premature deaths annually in advanced economies.

·       When hydrogen displaces diesel in city fleets, ports, or trains, local NOx and PM emissions are nearly eliminated—offering direct, measurable reductions in asthma rates, cardiovascular disease, and hospital admissions. A recent EU-wide trial replacing diesel buses with hydrogen models in a 1-million-population metro saw PM2.5 levels drop by 30–40% on major routes and an 18% year-over-year reduction in related emergency room visits.

·       For industrial districts running on hydrogen boilers, stack emissions of SOx and particulates essentially drop to zero, avoiding costly “flue gas scrubbing” and local compliance penalties.

Unlike carbon targets, which are often discounted at regulatory levels and monetize years or decades in the future, the economic benefit of cleaner air and reduced healthcare burdens is immediate and local. Studies peg the marginal benefit of every ton of NOx or PM2.5 abated at up to $18,000 in avoided societal costs.

The lesson from this wave of project cancellations isn’t to abandon hydrogen. Rather, it’s to reorient our strategy: deploy hydrogen where its unique qualities deliver irreplaceable value. We shouldn’t expect hydrogen to replace every ton of hydrocarbon everywhere, nor make it the all-or-nothing CO₂ solution. Instead, it can—and should—be prioritized for the sectors, applications, and geographies where its impact is most profound: industrial clusters, heavy mobility, backup power, and areas suffering acute air quality crises.

Investors and planners should heed the data: the $5–7/kg “headline” prices that make for splashy media stories are largely a function of early-stage, grandiose “all-in” megaprojects. The real story is decentralized, integrated deployment—at industrial parks, ports, and transit networks—where hydrogen can deliver secure, dispatchable, and cleaner power with a positive business case based on efficiency and public health.

Consider Singapore’s Tuas Port microgrid, Germany’s H2-Industriepark clusters, and the IDAES-II supply chain models being run in the American Midwest: all are now targeting “sweet spot” deployments that match hydrogen supply with steady, value-creating demand, and avoiding the overreliance on grand hydrogen exports swimming against market realities.

In summary, while the news may seem bleak with mega-projects falling through, that does not spell doom for hydrogen, nor for rational decarbonization policy. Worrying about missing carbon quotas is understandable, but from a systems perspective, we win more—sooner—by capturing the real hydrogen dividend: energy efficiency, technological flexibility, reliable integration with renewables, and sharply lower urban and industrial air pollution.

As global policy shifts, we should be pragmatic, not panicked. Let’s drive hydrogen investment to where it offers the greatest economic, social, and health return—and let’s tell the real story, using data, not dogma.

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.