Anyone following the headlines could be forgiven for confusion. In the same news cycle you read about new hydrogen trucks going into service and about hydrogen projects being cancelled. So: is hydrogen coming or not? In a recent essay on wasserstoff-politik.ch, Prof. Dr. Markus Friedl gives an answer that is neither hype nor obituary — and that explains why Switzerland currently has more green hydrogen capacity than demand.
Both stories are true at the same time
On the plus side: G. Leclerc Transport AG and Genossenschaft Migros Ostschweiz put Switzerland’s first hydrogen semi-trailer trucks into service in May and July 2025, two each. That lifted the Swiss hydrogen truck fleet from 48 to 52 vehicles — the first increase in five years. On the minus side: the hydrogen train project in the Zillertal was stopped in June 2024.
Friedl’s point is that neither headline settles the question, because the case for hydrogen does not rest on any single project. It rests on what the energy system as a whole needs.
No credible model produces an all-electric energy system
Numerous models calculate how Switzerland could meet its energy demand in a future year, hour by hour. Their developers exchange results within the Swiss Federal Office of Energy’s SWEET research programme, in the CoSi project. Not one of these models concludes that the future system can be purely electric.
The consensus is different: a working energy system rests on many technologies, and its consumers — mobility, freight, heating, cooling, industrial processes, electricity use — have to be coordinated with each other. That is sector coupling. In those models, green hydrogen and its derivatives methane, methanol and ammonia take on several important roles, alongside the biogenic energy carriers biogas and wood.
Driver one: what the electricity grid needs
Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen in an electrolyser powered by renewable electricity. Two forces drive the construction and operation of those electrolysers — and right now, one of them is clearly ahead.
The first is the grid itself. The electricity from the many photovoltaic installations Switzerland urgently needs has to be integrated into the energy system, and it arrives at times when demand is low. Negative prices on the exchanges are not a market failure or an anomaly — that is supply and demand doing their job. Since 1 January 2025 the new Electricity Act gives utilities more room to respond, including dynamic tariffs from next year.
Utilities expect long stretches of very cheap power ahead. Alpiq calculates that from 2040 onwards, electricity will trade below 2 Rp/kWh for at least 40% of the time — which means it can also be negative. It is therefore mainly electricity producers that currently have new electrolyser projects either in construction or in the drawer, on top of the six plants already operating: Niedergösgen (2 MWel), St. Gallen Kubel (2 MWel), Reichenbach in Domat/Ems (2.5 MWel), Schiffenen (2 MWel), Bulle (2 MWel) and Buchs AG (2 MWel), plus Grenzach-Wyhlen just across the German border (1 MWel, being expanded to 6 MWel). Construction has started in Bürglen (2 MWel), and an investment decision has been taken in Buchs SG (2 MWel).
In other words: utilities are looking to hydrogen for a new outlet for renewable electricity when prices are very low or negative.
Driver two: demand for green hydrogen
The second driver is the demand side — and it is developing more slowly. The 2018 initiative by H2 Energy, Hydrospider and the Förderverein H2 Mobilität Schweiz was built on the need for renewable energy in heavy road freight. At the time, battery-electric technology was not far enough along, so a fuel-cell electric drivetrain looked like the only complement to a combustion engine running on biogas. Today the expectation is that several technologies will complement each other in trucking.
The Federal Council’s November 2023 report lists further applications: ships, trains, high-temperature industrial processes, seasonal storage, long-haul aviation, steel production and refineries. Two Swiss examples are already concrete. Vögtlin-Meyer AG in Windisch is building up a fleet of hydrogen buses for longer routes. And the Schifffahrtsgesellschaft des Vierwaldstättersees (SGV) AG, together with Axpo, AVIA Schätzle and energieUri AG, is converting a passenger ship from diesel to hydrogen propulsion for Lake Lucerne — a vessel now expected to enter scheduled service in spring 2027.
Both are good complements to battery-electric technology, which already works well for buses and ships on short routes. And there is a logistics argument on top: because grey hydrogen is currently trucked into Switzerland from abroad, domestically produced green hydrogen can be a competitive substitute simply through a shorter supply chain.
Derivatives give hydrogen somewhere to go
Demand can also come from hydrogen’s derivatives. Synthetic methane can be fed into the existing gas grid, and synthetic methanol is a liquid that stores extremely well over long periods. Both can serve as seasonal storage, and both replace their fossil counterparts one to one — which means they can also replace fossil feedstocks in industry.
Crucially for the current phase, derivatives offer an outlet for hydrogen while direct demand is still thin.
Why supply currently runs ahead of demand
Put the two drivers side by side and the present situation becomes clear: green hydrogen production in Switzerland is driven more by the needs of the electricity grid than by demand for the molecule. The result is production capacity for more green hydrogen than is currently being asked for.
Industry is a large part of the reason. Renewable energy — green hydrogen included — is very often benchmarked against today’s fossil energy, and on that comparison it looks competitive only in special cases. The CO₂ reductions demanded by regulators and customers can still be covered by other measures and by certificates.
Meanwhile, global players assess the hydrogen economy from a global perspective and keep bringing products to market: Liebherr is testing a hydrogen wheel loader, Hyundai has launched hydrogen-electric waste collection and tipper vehicles, and Casale offers a production plant for green ammonia. But this takes time, because new technologies are expected to deliver the same convenience, reliability and safety we are used to from the fossil energy system. The Swiss Federal Office of Energy’s pilot and demonstration programme could have given new technologies a strong push — it has unfortunately been stopped. Industry now has to step into that gap.
Hydrogen from biomass, with negative emissions
Electrolysis is not the only route. H2 Bois SA is building a plant in Glovelier in the Jura in 2026 that produces green hydrogen from wood, and Empa is developing a pyrolysis plant for the Tech Cluster Zug that converts biogas into green hydrogen. Both routes make negative CO₂ emissions possible.
So: is hydrogen coming?
Friedl’s conclusion is that it has to. A purely electric energy system does not work. Electricity producers need hydrogen to make use of renewable power in periods of oversupply. There are applications for green hydrogen and its derivatives that complement battery-electric and other systems well — and others for which no renewable alternative exists at all.
What is still building only slowly is solid demand, and it will keep building as more hydrogen products reach the market. Getting there requires cross-border cooperation between research, policy and business — which is exactly the space SPIN works in.
This article summarises and comments on «Kommt jetzt der Wasserstoff oder nicht?» by Prof. Dr. Markus Friedl. Read the original (in German) at wasserstoff-politik.ch.
🤖 AI transparency: This text and its visual were created using AI, reviewed and approved by a human.