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It’s a tough time for U.S. companies trying to make a go of green hydrogen.
The Trump administration is threatening to cut billions of dollars in funding for hydrogen hubs and rapidly phasing out key tax incentives for the fuel. Major projects are getting canceled. Companies banking on the sector are struggling. And the wholesale abandonment of U.S. climate policy has undermined confidence in market prospects for low-carbon hydrogen that were already shaky before President Donald Trump won a second term.
Even so, Raffi Garabedian, CEO of U.S.-based electrolyzer manufacturer Electric Hydrogen, sees a path forward for his firm — and the industry as a whole.
It won’t be nearly as smooth or as fast as he had hoped. And much of it will take place in Europe, where climate policy and fossil fuel costs make green hydrogen more viable. But even in the U.S., there are still some promising prospects for projects that can get built quickly enough, capture ever-cheaper renewable energy, and find motivated buyers, he said.
Take Project Roadrunner, which is being built in West Texas by alternative-fuels startup Infinium to produce “e-fuels” — drop-in replacements for jet fuel and other fossil fuels made by combining low-carbon hydrogen with waste carbon captured from industrial emissions. Infinium plans to start commercial production at the site in 2027. Last May, Infinium selected Electric Hydrogen’s 100-megawatt HYPRPlant electrolyzer system, which uses water and electricity to make the hydrogen.
Infinium is contracting for clean electricity for the site, including 150 megawatts of wind power from NextEra Energy. It has also won long-term offtake commitments from American Airlines, Citibank, and International Airlines Group to pay for Project Roadrunner’s sustainable aviation fuels made with renewable electricity — “eSAF” in industry jargon. That’s a vital step for securing the stable financing required to build first-of-a-kind facilities, particularly in the nascent green-hydrogen field.
To wit, Brookfield Asset Management and Breakthrough Energy Catalyst are providing funding.
“We’re superexcited about eSAF in particular, because there’s strong policy support. And even at the voluntary level, there seems to be strong corporate willingness to pay for air-travel decarbonization,” Garabedian said.
Other orders have followed for his firm. In September, HIF Global announced it will use Electric Hydrogen’s electrolyzers for a plant in Texas that will produce e-fuels. And in December, Synergen Green Energy said it would install two 120-megawatt HYPRPlants for a green ammonia plant it’s developing on the Texas Gulf Coast.
The HIF Global and Synergen projects are in the early stages of development, and seeing them through will depend on securing financing, permits, and buyers for their e-fuels. In today’s post-boom green-hydrogen market, that’s far from a sure thing.
But in Texas, several factors work in their favor. The Gulf Coast has the infrastructure, from its oil and gas industries, to make, store, and transport hydrogen at large scale. It has access to large and growing amounts of solar and wind power to supply electrolyzers that need affordable clean electricity to compete with fossil fuels.
Another key factor in driving down green-hydrogen costs is making cheaper electrolyzers and supporting equipment. And on that front, Electric Hydrogen is relying on proving out its lower-cost claims to win advantage.
The company, which has raised over $600 million, has built a factory in Devens, Massachusetts, to make its electrolyzer stacks — the core parts of the proton exchange membrane (PEM) systems that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It has also partnered with other component manufacturers and engineering firms to streamline and standardize building the many other working parts of a green hydrogen plant — including power conversion, gas processing, water treatment, and thermal management — in a more modular way, Garabedian said.
Overall, Electric Hydrogen claims its total installed costs are less than half those of systems using electrolyzers from PEM competitors such as Germany’s Siemens Energy and Thyssenkrupp Nucera, as well as those of lower-cost alkaline electrolysis systems built by Chinese companies, which make up the majority of installed capacity today.
“The most important thing in our business is cost,” Garabedian said, but “it doesn’t matter what your electrolyzer costs — it’s what your total installed plant costs.”
However, cost comparisons between different electrolyzer manufacturers and fully built green-hydrogen facilities are far from an exact science in this industry, said Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James.
The world had approximately 2 gigawatts of hydrogen electrolyzers in operation at the end of 2024, according to the International Energy Agency’s “Global 2025 Hydrogen Review.” That amount, Molchanov said, is “a rounding error” compared with global fossil fuel–based hydrogen capacity.
Electrolyzer companies face a tough market, Molchanov added. The International Energy Agency reports that global electrolyzer manufacturing capacity expanded from just over 10 gigawatts in 2022 to more than 50 gigawatts in 2025. But in that time, forecasted demand for green hydrogen has plummeted, which leaves “far more manufacturing capacity available than what’s getting deployed,” Molchanov said. “That’s a lot of underutilized factories.”
That imbalance between electrolyzer supply and demand has taken its toll. Last week, major U.S. engine and generator manufacturer Cummins announced it was halting commercial efforts for its electrolyzer business, which constitutes about 1 gigawatt of manufacturing capacity in the U.S. and Spain. Demand for electrolyzers has “dried up,” Chief Financial Officer Mark Smith said in a November earnings call.
Garabedian conceded that challenge: “We definitely built the company for growth, and we’ve seen growth slower than we anticipated and hoped. As I look at the market, I think we’re looking at another year and a half of muted activity.”
But he also stressed that buyers for green hydrogen and products made from it aren’t likely to be found in the U.S., at least not in the near term. Neither the politics under Trump nor the economics are in its favor.
The country’s cheap and abundant supply of fossil gas means that green hydrogen remains roughly three times more expensive than “gray hydrogen,” which is derived from fossil gas. This is true even for projects that secure the 45V hydrogen tax credits, which expire at the end of next year.
“No one in the U.S. is thinking about deep decarbonization these days,” Garabedian said. “And the price of natural gas is such in the U.S. that it’s hard to impossible for green hydrogen to compete head-to-head economically.”
In Europe, by contrast, gas prices are regularly three to four times as high as they are in the U.S., making green hydrogen more cost competitive, Molchanov noted. And policies set by the European Union and adopted by national governments require major industries to meet carbon-cutting targets, which are expected to spur demand for clean hydrogen.
That’s why the HIF Global and Synergen projects that Electric Hydrogen is supplying electrolyzers to in the U.S. are aimed at exporting their products, primarily to Europe, Garabedian said.
It also explains Electric Hydrogen’s push into Europe for its next wave of electrolyzer deals. In 2024, Germany-based energy company Uniper picked Electric Hydrogen for a 200-megawatt green hydrogen and ammonia plant, set to start production in 2028. Garabedian said the company will soon announce a similarly scaled German project, though he declined to provide more details.
“It is a complicated global market. And we, as an American supplier, have a strategy to address that,” he said. “Unfortunately, it does mean moving a lot of our supply chain to Europe for European suppliers.”
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