New Energy

Green Hydrogen Goes From Hyped to Humbled on Eye-Popping Costs

  • High expense of production forces developers to scrap plans
  • BP and Orsted are among companies to have ditched proposals
Hydrogen storage tanks at a green hydrogen plant in Puertollano, Spain.Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg
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A raft of projects to produce green hydrogen, a fuel billed as critical to reaching net zero, have been abandoned this year as expectations for tumbling costs failed to materialize.

Governments and major energy companies have touted the gas as a way to clean up a swath of industries. But the uneconomic cost of production has forced multiple developers to scrap plans, leaving the nascent sector struggling to attract the billions of dollars it needs to meaningfully cut carbon emissions.