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Hydrogen’s future may not be so green

29 May 2025

Commentary
Jennifer Aguinaldo
Energy & technology editor

Much has changed in the region’s hydrogen landscape since the first projects were launched in a flurry of excitement.

Initially, in anticipation of demand for low-carbon fuel arising from Asia and Europe by the early 2030s, aspiring green hubs such as Egypt, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia announced batches of large-scale green hydrogen and ammonia projects.

Two or three of these have progressed. At Neom, the world’s largest and most ambitious green hydrogen and ammonia production plant is under construction. The $8.4bn project reached financial close in May 2023, achieved a 60% completion rate in December, and appears on track to meet the company’s 2026 target commercial operation date.

In Oman, meanwhile, where the sultanate’s third hydrogen block land auction is ongoing, developers and downstream companies are expected to submit bids sometime this year.

However, across the Middle East and North Africa region, most of the projects announced in the past few years remain in the concept or preliminary design stages, while the rest have not moved beyond signing the memorandums of understanding.

With the exception of Oman, there have been few announcements on new green hydrogen projects in the region over the past 12 months.

Shareholders have even revolted over clean hydrogen plans. Seifi Ghasemi, former CEO of Air Products, which co-owns the Neom Green Hydrogen Company, along with Saudi utility developer Acwa Power and gigaproject developer Neom, was removed from the firm’s board earlier this year, with sources citing the company shareholders’ opposition to the firm’s green hydrogen plans.

In addition to being a co-owner, Air Products is also the main offtaker, contractor and systems integrator of the Neom green hydrogen project.

Cost issue

The main issue for these projects remains the cost of production, according to Michael Liebreich, managing partner at UK firm EcoPragma Capita.

“If green ammonia is going to work anywhere, it should be [in] Oman and the GCC,” he explains. However, the London-based executive and entrepreneur has doubts about green hydrogen’s economics.

Earlier this year, his conversations with “a number of participants in green hydrogen and ammonia projects” indicate that the costs they are able to achieve today come to around $6 a kilogram (kg), and potentially $4/kg in five years for projects coming online in the early 2030s.

“They talk about $3/kg or $2.5/kg, but you could only get there by offering incentives such as subsidies, concessionary finance, free land, free infrastructure and offtake guarantees,” notes Liebreich.

While the region has very cheap solar power, a $15 a megawatt-hour (MWh) solar tariff does not necessarily lead to cheap hydrogen because it is only available roughly 25% of the time. To get to 24/7, one needs batteries, and in jurisdictions like Abu Dhabi, this will take the price to roughly $50/MWh.

Adds Liebreich: “And since you need 50kWh of power per kilogram of hydrogen, assuming an 80% efficiency, that means you have $2.50/kg just of electricity cost. No capex, no maintenance, no compression, no pipelines, nothing. So $4/kg looks like being a floor price for a long time; $3/kg would be the outside edge of achievable.”

Meanwhile, fossil gas at around $1-1.50/kg creates an extra cost of $2.50/kg, which means that anyone producing a million tonnes of green hydrogen a year has to cover the extra cost of $2.5bn a year and find at least 15 years of guaranteed offtake to get the project built.

“You need to secure 15 years of support to close the cost gap of $37.5bn. You need it guaranteed upfront by someone with a bullet-proof balance sheet – so that’s either a government or sovereign wealth fund.”

The near-impossibility of exporting liquid hydrogen to Europe due to prohibitive costs and inefficiency of liquefying the hydrogen should also be considered.

In comparison, a more feasible option could be putting ammonia on a ship to Europe, where it could benefit from a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) at the same price as a tonne of carbon under EU-ETS.

According to Liebreich, under this scenario, each kilogram of green hydrogen reduces emissions by around 9kg, and the EU-ETS price today is €72 ($81)/tonne.

“So each kilogram of green hydrogen will avoid a carbon price of $0.009 x 81, which is equal to $0.72. That closes your gap, so a tonne of green ammonia is now only $320 more than a tonne of grey, or only double the price,” Liebreich explains.

“Look at it another way, if you want to export 1 million tonnes of hydrogen as ammonia a year into Europe, you are still looking at an annual cost gap of $1.8bn after taking the EU-ETS CBAM into account. And you need a 15-year deal, so that’s $27bn,” he notes, under the assumption one can get the hydrogen price down to $4/kg.

Far from being rosy, Liebreich concludes that green hydrogen-wise, the region could be heading down a blind alley. “There will be almost no import market for green hydrogen or its derivatives because, in the best scenario, they will remain too expensive.”

Bright side

Liebreich’s dour forecast collides with the vision of most regional stakeholders that net zero by 2050 will not be possible without low-carbon, and particularly green, hydrogen and its derivatives, including green ammonia, methanol and sustainable aviation fuel.

Mohammad Abdelqader El-Ramahi, chief green hydrogen officer at Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), for instance, told MEED in October that green hydrogen is the most important driver and enabler of net zero and decarbonisation. “Very few people know that electrification alone can address no more than 30% of our decarbonisation [needs], even if we install all sorts of renewable sources,” he said.

Abu Dhabi intends to replicate its success in the energy sector’s previous four waves – oil and gas in the 1960s, liquefied natural gas and anti-flaring in the 1970s, renewable energy in the 2000s and nuclear energy in the 2020s – in the sector’s fifth low-carbon hydrogen wave.   

The list of Masdar’s potential green hydrogen partners includes Ireland-headquartered Linde; France’s TotalEnergies; the UK’s BP; Austria’s Verbund; and Japan’s Mitsui, Osaka Gas, Mitsubishi Chemical, Inpex and Toyo Gas.

Despite the slow progress and major reality check, hope proverbially springs. “Green hydrogen is the inevitable future fuel,” El-Ramahi asserted.

 

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Jennifer Aguinaldo

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