Green 
Hydrogen’s 
Double Bind: Is it about Global Breakthroughs or Market Breakdowns?

Green hydrogen stands at a crossroads—hailed as a linchpin of the low-carbon future, yet caught in a double bind between stunning technical progress and the stubborn realities of implementation. Shanghai Electric just delivered its first barrels of green methanol at a wind-and-biomass facility hailed as a world first. Envision Energy is ramping up to 320,000 tons of green ammonia in Inner Mongolia without touching the grid. In California, NewHydrogen is skipping electricity altogether with a looping thermal process that could change the game.

But even as these breakthroughs surge, cracks widen: Stellantis is walking away from hydrogen vehicles, citing a “niche market” and missing infrastructure. The contradiction is now unmistakable—this is a fuel racing ahead in theory, but stalling where rubber meets road.

The “Breakthroughs”: Stunning Technical Progress and Strategic Vision

The global landscape for green hydrogen is characterized by an array of impressive advancements in production scale, technological innovation, and governmental backing:

Scaling Up Production and Commercialization

In Australia, Energys has secured planning approval for its green hydrogen production facility in Hastings, Victoria. This project is a commercially focused B2B industrial supply initiative, designed to displace grey hydrogen derived from natural gas. The facility will leverage a 1 MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer, powered by surplus renewable grid electricity during low wholesale energy prices. Coregas, an Australian hydrogen producer, will operate the site, managing logistics and distribution to end-users, marketing the hydrogen under commercial terms.

China is demonstrating a powerful drive in large-scale green hydrogen production. Shanghai Electric has launched the first phase of its Taonan green hydrogen-to-methanol plant in Jilin, a global first for a commercial-scale project integrating wind power and biomass gasification to produce green methanol. This facility delivered its initial green methanol on July 14 and is projected to yield 50,000 tons of green methanol by 2025. Its unique closed-loop system processes agricultural and forestry waste into syngas, combines it with wind-generated green hydrogen, and synthesizes methanol on-site.

Another Chinese giant, Envision Energy, has commissioned a significant green hydrogen and ammonia production facility in Chifeng. This plant is designed to produce 320,000 tons of green ammonia annually, with exports slated to begin in late 2025. Envision highlights that its system “dynamically balances wind and solar input with electrolyzer and ammonia synthesis demands, ensuring continuous, cost-effective green fuel production without grid reliance,” showcasing a model for future clean energy production. Envision’s CEO, Lei Zhang, affirmed that these “scalable, green alternatives are now real and operational,” emphasizing that “we can’t get to net zero without green hydrogen, and we can’t afford to wait”.

In the UK, Hazer Group and EnergyPathways (EPP) have signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to assess the development of a Hazer-licensed hydrogen production facility. This facility, with an indicative capacity of 20,000 tons per annum, would integrate with the MESH infrastructure project, utilizing feedstock to produce, store, and distribute hydrogen, ammonia, and graphite in Northwest England.

Pioneering New Production Technologies:

NewHydrogen in California has announced its first production of clean hydrogen using its ThermoLoop technology. This innovative method uses heat rather than electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in a continuous looping reaction. The company noted a major milestone in achieving simultaneous production of both hydrogen and oxygen, allowing for continuous hydrogen production and refinement of the underlying chemistry.

PyroGenesis’s subsidiary, Pyro Green-Gas, has completed a project for Tata Steel in India involving the valorization of coke-oven gas. This process extracts and purifies hydrogen from blast furnace gas to an impressive 99.999% purity level. The reformed hydrogen is then reused within the Tata Steel facility, improving production efficiency and environmental outcomes.

Crucial Governmental and R&D Support

India’s Ministry of New & Renewable Energy has issued a second call for proposals under the Research and Development Scheme of its National Green Hydrogen Mission. Launched on January 4, 2023, the NGHM is a cornerstone of India’s strategy to become a global hub for green hydrogen production, utilization, and export. This initiative specifically targets indigenous technology development for affordable, safe, efficient, and scalable deployment of green hydrogen and its derivatives across the country.

The “Breakdown”: Stubborn Realities of Implementation

Despite these compelling advances, the path to widespread green hydrogen adoption is not straightforward. The stubborn realities of implementation are starkly highlighted by challenges in infrastructure, cost, and market readiness:

Stellantis’s Retreat from Hydrogen Vehicles

A significant indicator of these challenges comes from the automotive sector. Car manufacturer Stellantis recently announced its decision to discontinue its hydrogen fuel cell technology program, and will no longer launch hydrogen-powered vehicles this year. The group explicitly attributed this decision to “the limited availability of hydrogen refueling infrastructure, high capital requirements and the need for stronger purchase incentives for customers”.

Jean-Philippe Imparato, Stellantis’s chief operating officer for enlarged Europe, stated unequivocally that “the hydrogen market remains a niche segment, with no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability”. This strategic pivot by a major global player underscores the critical gap between technological readiness and market viability, illustrating how the absence of supporting infrastructure and economic incentives can lead to a “breakdown” in commercialization efforts, even amidst global production breakthroughs.

Navigating the Double Bind
 Green hydrogen’s story today reads like a cast of brilliant characters without a shared plot. Envision Energy can now produce hundreds of thousands of tons of green ammonia off-grid. NewHydrogen is reinventing water-splitting without a spark of electricity. Shanghai Electric is delivering green methanol from wind and agricultural waste in a single closed-loop system. India is rallying its national research engine to become a global hydrogen hub.

But then Stellantis exits stage left, citing a lack of refueling stations, cost incentives, and customer demand.

Persistence through the GTESI lens

From a GTESI perspective, green hydrogen today is caught between persistence vectors pulling in opposite directions. It exports entropy beautifully—converting stranded wind, waste heat, and biogenic carbon into dense, usable energy. It offers long-term structural value, storing seasonal energy and decarbonizing hard-to-abate sectors. But symbolically and economically, it struggles. It lacks a simple narrative, a dominant use case, and a self-reinforcing feedback loop of demand. In short: green hydrogen has thermodynamic elegance—but weak symbolic compression. Without policy scaffolding or killer apps to anchor it in the real economy, even the most refined systems risk evaporation.

The Bottom Line

For green hydrogen to break through—not just technologically, but commercially—it needs more than capability. It needs context, connection, and above all, demand. The most advanced technologies in the world are wandering in search of a killer app—something that turns potential into pull, scale into inevitability.

Until then, we’re building elegant solutions without a starring role, and every success risks becoming a ghost: visible, viable, but unclaimed.