Breakdown of the IEA Global Hydrogen Review 2025

Global Hydrogen Review 2025 from the IEA: my take on it (by Carlos Bernie Lopez)

Every year the IEA comes with a very extended report describing the status of hydrogen in the world. It is nearly impossible to summarize in a post the hard work that many colleagues have put to come up with this nice work so I recommend to everyone to go the source and read it carefully.

However, I would like to highlight a few points that hopefully will help us to go forward.

1. Renewable Hydrogen is needed. It is becoming more and more clear to everyone that a considerable amount of renewable hydrogen will be needed to achieve our final climate targets. It is also clear that we are very far from even the the low-end estimations of how much hydrogen we will be needing (~100 million tonnes) in a decarbonized world. Only 1 % of this volume will be produced in 2025.

2. It is important to understand what we need. Although there is no a round solution to produce cheap renewable hydrogen yet, we understand much more what we need technologically. Electrolytic technologies needs to become as efficient as possible (i.e. SOEC, high efficient low temperature electrolysis: below 40 kWh/kg of H2) and contain their costs (total CAPEX around 1000 €/kW).

At the same time, if natural gas wants to be an option both methane emission avoidance and carbon capture should be much higher than now (close to nothing regarding methane emissions and up to 95 % on carbon capture) while keeping low cost of production. This implies much heavier R&D investments.

3. Target costs needs to align with reality. We need to face the hard true that to produce renewable hydrogen is expensive, and therefore to aim for much more real targets. Let’s focus on producing renewable hydrogen at 4 €/kg by 2030, with the target to get to 3 €/kg at the end of the journey. We then need to find the off-takers with the highest willingness to pay to lead the way, and to bring them the product that they are demanded which will not be always the molecule of hydrogen but a derivative (HBI, ammonia, methanol, SAF, etc…).

And finally, let’s remember Kennedy’s speech in the efforts to go the Moon:

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too”.

Let’s do it, folks!

Source: Carlos Bernie Lopez