Clifford Chance

Focus on hydrogen: State of the market 2025

3 March 2025

Much has been said about clean hydrogen and its derivatives over the past 12 months. Often it concerns whether excessive hype of the recent past has been replaced with a new reality. Market conditions are dynamic, and structuring sustainable deals remains a complex exercise. But, amongst the ups, the downs and the volatility, we have seen real progress. In this note, we consider the market trends that will impact pathfinder projects seeking commercial operations before 2030.

The activity of recent years has resulted in price and market discovery data. It has provided know-how on what can, and what probably won't, work over the short to medium term. Most notably, with the recent change of administration in the US, we see the impact of policy on the market. As developers and investors look ahead to the end of the decade and plan their investments accordingly, this early experience is invaluable.

For those first mover projects pursuing commercial operations before 2030, we would expect to see further ups and downs. Clean hydrogen deals and associated market conditions differ greatly between geographies, the types of end user(s) involved and the extent of the value chain between the production "well" and delivery "gate".

Clean hydrogen's contribution to the energy transition is becoming clearer, and 2025 could be a hugely important year: we hope to see incremental growth for deal activity and an increasing number of positive final investment decisions.

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