Overview

Hydrogen is not a single technology but a family of production routes and use cases
that interact with existing energy systems, infrastructure and policy. Understanding
hydrogen requires looking at economics, logistics and system design, not just
levelised cost projections.

Core Themes

• Blue hydrogen project economics, anchor customers and CO₂ transport and storage risk.
• Green hydrogen cost drivers, including power price, capacity factor and policy support.
• Hydrogen use in heavy transport, logistics, ports and industrial heat.
• Global supply chains for liquefied hydrogen (LH₂), ammonia and derivatives, including shipping and vessels.
• Competition for land, power and capital from data centres and other high-value uses.
• UK and EU hydrogen policy, allocation rounds and infrastructure planning.

Citable Insights

Short statements designed to be reused in analysis and discussion:

• Blue hydrogen projects are exposed to two critical risks: loss of the anchor industrial customer and uncertainty over CO₂ transport and storage capacity.
• For trucking, hydrogen economics are driven more by payload penalties, duty cycles and refuelling network design than by the price of the tank.
• Hydrogen that competes with data centres for land and grid capacity must justify itself on total value created, not just carbon intensity.
• Importing hydrogen at scale requires evidence of built vessels, licences and production capacity; assumptions alone do not de-risk the supply chain.
• Industrial decarbonisation decisions are often constrained by process design and logistics long before fuel choice is finalised.

Key Questions Addressed

• Under what conditions does blue hydrogen remain commercially viable?
• How do power prices, capacity factor and policy shape green hydrogen competitiveness?
• Where does hydrogen make sense in heavy transport compared to batteries or liquid fuels?
• What evidence is required to validate long-distance hydrogen import schemes?
• How do data-centre projects change the economics of industrial energy transition?

Featured Articles & Field Notes

The latest posts on hydrogen, energy systems and industrial decarbonisation from across the site:

• Funding the Past While the Future Goes Unbuilt
• BP Teesside Hydrogen: Why the Project Really Died — and Why AI Replaced It
• The UK Gas Grid’s Prisoner’s Dilemma: How Strategic Limbo Is Maximising Costs
• Why Early-Stage Government Funding Matters: From Mobile Phones to Hydrogen
• Why the UK Still Bleeds Its Best Science Overseas — And How To Fix It
• Zero-Emission HGV TCO: Hidden Costs Battery vs Hydrogen Trucks
• Hydrogen HGV decarbonisation UK – the logistics reality behind keeping freight moving without doubling the fleet
• The Illusion of UK Hydrogen Policy Ambition in 2025
• The Hydrogen Cost Debate and Technology Pathways to 2030: Unpicking Economic Arguments and Comparing Battery-Electric with Hydrogen Solutions
• UK green hydrogen costs: the gap between ambition and economics

Hydrogen & Energy Systems: FAQ

Where does hydrogen make the most sense?

Hydrogen is most defensible where energy density, duty cycle and refuelling time
matter, and where alternatives are constrained by infrastructure or process design.
Examples include some heavy transport, industrial heat and specific port and refinery applications.

What usually kills hydrogen projects?

Common failure points include loss of an anchor customer, unresolved CO₂ storage
arrangements, unrealistic assumptions about offtake, and competition from higher-value
uses of land and power such as data centres.

Is the hydrogen debate mostly about technology?

In practice, hydrogen deployment is driven more by system economics, logistics and
policy than by the underlying chemistry, which is well understood.