IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natene/v10y2025i1d10.1038_s41560-024-01684-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap

Author

Listed:
  • Adrian Odenweller

    (Member of the Leibniz Association
    Technical University of Berlin)

  • Falko Ueckerdt

    (Member of the Leibniz Association)

Abstract

Green hydrogen is critical for decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors, but it faces high costs and investment risks. Here we define and quantify the green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap, showing that meeting hydrogen expectations will remain challenging despite surging announcements of projects and subsidies. Tracking 190 projects over 3 years, we identify a wide 2023 implementation gap with only 7% of global capacity announcements finished on schedule. In contrast, the 2030 ambition gap towards 1.5 °C scenarios has been gradually closing as the announced project pipeline has nearly tripled to 422 GW within 3 years. However, we estimate that, without carbon pricing, realizing all these projects would require global subsidies of US$1.3 trillion (US$0.8–2.6 trillion range), far exceeding announced subsidies. Given past and future implementation gaps, policymakers must prepare for prolonged green hydrogen scarcity. Policy support needs to secure hydrogen investments, but should focus on applications where hydrogen is indispensable.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt, 2025. "The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 110-123, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natene:v:10:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41560-024-01684-7
    DOI: 10.1038/s41560-024-01684-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01684-7
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41560-024-01684-7?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bryan K. Mignone & Leon Clarke & James A. Edmonds & Angelo Gurgel & Howard J. Herzog & Jeremiah X. Johnson & Dharik S. Mallapragada & Haewon McJeon & Jennifer Morris & Patrick R. O’Rourke & Sergey Pal, 2024. "Drivers and implications of alternative routes to fuels decarbonization in net-zero energy systems," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, December.
    2. Nemet, Gregory F. & Zipperer, Vera & Kraus, Martina, 2018. "The valley of death, the technology pork barrel, and public support for large demonstration projects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 154-167.
    3. Joanna Sitarz & Michael Pahle & Sebastian Osorio & Gunnar Luderer & Robert Pietzcker, 2024. "EU carbon prices signal high policy credibility and farsighted actors," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 9(6), pages 691-702, June.
    4. Sonja Renssen, 2020. "The hydrogen solution?," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 10(9), pages 799-801, September.
    5. Aleh Cherp & Vadim Vinichenko & Jale Tosun & Joel A. Gordon & Jessica Jewell, 2021. "National growth dynamics of wind and solar power compared to the growth required for global climate targets," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 6(7), pages 742-754, July.
    6. Liang Jing & Hassan M. El-Houjeiri & Jean-Christophe Monfort & James Littlefield & Amjaad Al-Qahtani & Yash Dixit & Raymond L. Speth & Adam R. Brandt & Mohammad S. Masnadi & Heather L. MacLean & Willi, 2022. "Understanding variability in petroleum jet fuel life cycle greenhouse gas emissions to inform aviation decarbonization," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    7. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt & Gregory F. Nemet & Miha Jensterle & Gunnar Luderer, 2022. "Probabilistic feasibility space of scaling up green hydrogen supply," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(9), pages 854-865, September.
    8. William F. Lamb & Thomas Gasser & Rosa M. Roman-Cuesta & Giacomo Grassi & Matthew J. Gidden & Carter M. Powis & Oliver Geden & Gregory Nemet & Yoga Pratama & Keywan Riahi & Stephen M. Smith & Jan Stei, 2024. "The carbon dioxide removal gap," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 14(6), pages 644-651, June.
    9. Falko Ueckerdt & Christian Bauer & Alois Dirnaichner & Jordan Everall & Romain Sacchi & Gunnar Luderer, 2021. "Potential and risks of hydrogen-based e-fuels in climate change mitigation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 11(5), pages 384-393, May.
    10. Tsimafei Kazlou & Aleh Cherp & Jessica Jewell, 2024. "Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 14(10), pages 1047-1055, October.
    11. George, Jan Frederick & Müller, Viktor Paul & Winkler, Jenny & Ragwitz, Mario, 2022. "Is blue hydrogen a bridging technology? - The limits of a CO2 price and the role of state-induced price components for green hydrogen production in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    12. Lynnette Dray & Andreas W. Schäfer & Carla Grobler & Christoph Falter & Florian Allroggen & Marc E. J. Stettler & Steven R. H. Barrett, 2022. "Cost and emissions pathways towards net-zero climate impacts in aviation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 12(10), pages 956-962, October.
    13. Davis, Steven J & Lewis, Nathan S. & Shaner, Matthew & Aggarwal, Sonia & Arent, Doug & Azevedo, Inês & Benson, Sally & Bradley, Thomas & Brouwer, Jack & Chiang, Yet-Ming & Clack, Christopher T.M. & Co, 2018. "Net-Zero Emissions Energy Systems," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt7qv6q35r, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    14. Boris Stolz & Maximilian Held & Gil Georges & Konstantinos Boulouchos, 2022. "Techno-economic analysis of renewable fuels for ships carrying bulk cargo in Europe," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(2), pages 203-212, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Georgios Giakoumakis & Dimitrios Sidiras, 2025. "Production and Storage of Hydrogen from Biomass and Other Sources: Technologies and Policies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(3), pages 1-41, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt, 2024. "The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap," Papers 2406.07210, arXiv.org.
    2. Adrian Odenweller & Falko Ueckerdt & Gregory F. Nemet & Miha Jensterle & Gunnar Luderer, 2022. "Probabilistic feasibility space of scaling up green hydrogen supply," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(9), pages 854-865, September.
    3. Oshiro, Ken & Fujimori, Shinichiro, 2022. "Role of hydrogen-based energy carriers as an alternative option to reduce residual emissions associated with mid-century decarbonization goals," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    4. M. Millinger & F. Hedenus & E. Zeyen & F. Neumann & L. Reichenberg & G. Berndes, 2025. "Diversity of biomass usage pathways to achieve emissions targets in the European energy system," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 10(2), pages 226-242, February.
    5. Gunther Glenk & Stefan Reichelstein, 2022. "Reversible Power-to-Gas systems for energy conversion and storage," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    6. Fang, Yan Ru & Peng, Wei & Urpelainen, Johannes & Hossain, M.S. & Qin, Yue & Ma, Teng & Ren, Ming & Liu, Xiaorui & Zhang, Silu & Huang, Chen & Dai, Hancheng, 2023. "Neutralizing China's transportation sector requires combined decarbonization efforts from power and hydrogen supply," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 349(C).
    7. Valeria Vallejo & Quoc Nguyen & Arvind P. Ravikumar, 2024. "Geospatial variation in carbon accounting of hydrogen production and implications for the US Inflation Reduction Act," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 9(12), pages 1571-1582, December.
    8. Gordon, Joel A. & Balta-Ozkan, Nazmiye & Nabavi, Seyed Ali, 2022. "Homes of the future: Unpacking public perceptions to power the domestic hydrogen transition," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    9. Millinger, M. & Reichenberg, L. & Hedenus, F. & Berndes, G. & Zeyen, E. & Brown, T., 2022. "Are biofuel mandates cost-effective? - An analysis of transport fuels and biomass usage to achieve emissions targets in the European energy system," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    10. Jessica Kersey & Natalie D. Popovich & Amol A. Phadke, 2022. "Rapid battery cost declines accelerate the prospects of all-electric interregional container shipping," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 7(7), pages 664-674, July.
    11. Gordon, Joel A. & Balta-Ozkan, Nazmiye & Nabavi, Seyed Ali, 2023. "Price promises, trust deficits and energy justice: Public perceptions of hydrogen homes," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    12. Kemfert, Claudia & Präger, Fabian & Braunger, Isabell & Hoffart, Franziska M. & Brauers, Hanna, 2022. "The expansion of natural gas infrastructure puts energy transitions at risk," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 7, pages 582-587.
    13. Lamorlette, A., 2023. "A coupled model of global energy production and ERoEI applied to photovoltaic and wind, an estimation of net production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PB).
    14. Ajanovic, Amela & Sayer, Marlene & Haas, Reinhard, 2024. "On the future relevance of green hydrogen in Europe," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 358(C).
    15. Davide Tonelli & Lorenzo Rosa & Paolo Gabrielli & Ken Caldeira & Alessandro Parente & Francesco Contino, 2023. "Global land and water limits to electrolytic hydrogen production using wind and solar resources," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-14, December.
    16. Rosa, Lorenzo & Mazzotti, Marco, 2022. "Potential for hydrogen production from sustainable biomass with carbon capture and storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    17. Liu, Zefeng & Wang, Chaoyang & Fan, Jianlin & Liu, Ming & Xing, Yong & Yan, Junjie, 2024. "Enhancing the flexibility and stability of coal-fired power plants by optimizing control schemes of throttling high-pressure extraction steam," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    18. Li, Bohan & Wang, Chaoyang & Liu, Ming & Fan, Jianlin & Yan, Junjie, 2023. "Transient performance analysis of a solid oxide fuel cell during power regulations with different control strategies based on a 3D dynamic model," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    19. Candelaria Bergero & Greer Gosnell & Dolf Gielen & Seungwoo Kang & Morgan Bazilian & Steven J. Davis, 2023. "Pathways to net-zero emissions from aviation," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 6(4), pages 404-414, April.
    20. Gordon, Joel A. & Balta-Ozkan, Nazmiye & Nabavi, Seyed Ali, 2023. "Socio-technical barriers to domestic hydrogen futures: Repurposing pipelines, policies, and public perceptions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 336(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natene:v:10:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41560-024-01684-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.