Is the glass half-full or half-empty for hydrogen? That was the framing the International Energy Agency chose when it presented its Global Hydrogen Review 2025 to the eFuel Alliance on 22 June 2026. For anyone working on Power-to-X in Switzerland and Europe, the honest answer turns out to be both — and the nuance matters far more than the headline.
Real momentum beneath the noise
Strip away the gloom and there is genuine progress. Low-emissions hydrogen production from projects that have at least reached a final investment decision (FID) is on track to roughly quadruple, reaching around 4 Mt by 2030. The largest electrolyser in operation is set to grow fourfold over the same period, and flagship applications — hydrogen-based steelmaking, ammonia ship engines — are moving from prototype towards commercial availability. On top of the 4 Mtpa already committed or operational, the IEA judges that a further 6 Mtpa of announced capacity has a strong chance of coming online by 2030. That is the shape of a technology scaling up, not stalling.
…but the pipeline is consolidating
At the same time, the 2030 project pipeline has shrunk by about 25% compared with last year’s review. Crucially, the delays and cancellations are concentrated in early-stage projects — the speculative announcements that were never all going to materialise. The reasons are sobering and familiar: regulatory barriers top the list, followed by economic and technical challenges and a lack of committed offtake. In other words, the market is separating shovel-ready projects from wishful thinking. That is consolidation, not collapse.
Where Europe stands
Europe accounts for roughly a quarter of the global project pipeline — a strong position on paper. The reality check is in the detail: only 7% of announced European projects are operational, under construction or past FID, while a further 28% are judged to have strong potential to be running by 2030. The ambition is there; converting it into steel and electrons on the ground is the work that remains.
The cost question
Encouragingly, the production-cost gap can start to close by 2030. In regions that depend on imports and face high natural gas prices, renewable hydrogen could become genuinely competitive within five years. The review also punctures a convenient myth: that cheap Chinese electrolysers solve Europe’s cost problem. Installing a Chinese electrolyser in Europe cuts total CAPEX by only around 20% once local installation costs are added — and the saving on the final hydrogen production cost is smaller still, because electricity, not the electrolyser, is the dominant cost component.
Offtake is the real bottleneck — and e-SAF is exhibit A
If there is one structural lesson, it is that demand and firm offtake — not technology — now gate investment. Offtake agreements slowed in 2024, yet firm commitments in industry, refining and hydrogen-based fuels are exactly what is unlocking new production FIDs.
Nowhere is the gap clearer than in synthetic aviation fuel. Europe’s e-SAF obligations under ReFuelEU, together with the UK mandate, already point to 2030 demand well above committed production capacity. Europe has positioned itself as the lead market for synthetic kerosene — but offtake agreements and built capacity have not yet caught up. For SPIN members and the wider Power-to-X community, that mismatch is both a warning and an opportunity.
A premium of a few percentage points
And the cost to end users? Smaller than the debate implies. The renewable-hydrogen premium is large at the molecule level, but it raises the price of a European flight ticket by only about 2% and an electric vehicle by around 1%. eSAF combines renewable hydrogen with recycled CO₂, and its climate value is real precisely where it displaces fossil carbon rather than enabling more of it. Used that way, the fossil emissions from flying drop to near zero — for a barely perceptible change in the ticket price. The future of aviation is maybe a little less flying. It is definitely fossil-free flying.
What SPIN takes from this
The IEA’s policy recommendations read like a defossilisation to-do list: keep support schemes focused on shovel-ready projects in existing applications; accelerate demand creation through regulation; remove the barriers slowing hydrogen infrastructure; de-risk project financing; and help emerging economies move up the value chain. For Switzerland, the message is straightforward — back the projects that are real, build the offtake that makes them bankable, and treat renewable energy with recycled CO₂ as the backbone of the hard-to-abate sectors.
Half-full or half-empty? The water level is rising — just more slowly, and more honestly, than the early hype suggested. That is exactly the kind of reality check worth having. (The IEA has also launched an online Hydrogen Tracker mapping operational and announced low-emissions hydrogen projects worldwide.)
Power-to-X Congress Switzerland 2026 — Reality Check with Net Zero
22 September 2026, 10:00–18:00 · Kursaal Bern
Co-organised by energie-cluster.ch and the Swiss Power-to-X Collaborative Innovation Network (SPIN), with partner Réseau H2 Suisse Romande.