Electrolyzer stacks are manufactured, but hydrogen plants are built. Much of the apparent learning challenge—and most of the project cost—lives outside the stack factory.
Hydrogen cost forecasts often borrow one of the clean-energy transition’s most useful empirical tools: the experience curve. If a technology has historically fallen by a given percentage in cost every time cumulative deployment doubles, analysts can estimate how many doublings lie ahead and compound the learning rate into a future … [continued]
Hydrogen’s detour persisted because incumbent assets, skills and institutions had reasons to keep the molecule economy politically viable after the economics weakened.
In 2023, a senior executive responsible for decarbonizing a major transportation company asked me, with some exasperation, what drove the “madness on hydrogen.” Hydrogen proposals kept arriving for applications where the energy balance and economics looked dreadful. That conversation became What Drives This Madness On Hydrogen?, an attempt to explain … [continued]
Africa’s solar imports, rooftop imagery and customer-side market channels are beginning to reveal deployment that official capacity statistics miss.
Africa officially added about 4.5 GW of solar in 2025. It also imported about 18.2 GW of solar modules. Those numbers cannot simply be substituted for one another — panels sitting in warehouses or ports are not operating solar systems — but the gap is too large to dismiss as … [continued]
CUTRIC’s institutional conflict is now the core issue: transit agencies should verify independently, while members decide what their participation endorses.
CUTRIC has a credibility problem that extends well beyond its long enthusiasm for hydrogen buses. The underlying issue is whether an organization whose mission includes commercializing technologies should receive a presumption of neutrality when it advises transit agencies on investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After reviewing CUTRIC’s strategy, … [continued]
Hydrogen and electrification occupy surprisingly similar amounts of attention despite radically different levels of physical deployment.
Hydrogen occupies an unusually large share of the energy-transition information stream for the amount of physical deployment behind it. Fuel-cell trucks, buses, trains, ships, storage projects, demonstrations and records recur through corporate releases, government announcements, trade publications and mainstream reporting, creating the impression that hydrogen remains a substantial parallel pathway … [continued]
Coal is falling rapidly as a source of Polish electricity, but dependable coal capacity remains part of the reliability calculation through the transition.
Poland’s coal transition is moving much faster than the country’s reputation suggests. Coal supplied 72.5% of Polish electricity in 2021. By 2025 it was down to 52.7%, while renewables reached 31.4%. Coal supplied less than half of generation in five separate months, and in June renewables generated more electricity than … [continued]
Even the strongest apparent dual-product customer cannot absorb the mass balance: a large hydrogen-DRI steelworks could still leave roughly 80–90% of thermolysis graphite needing other markets.
Methane thermolysis has one of the cleaner propositions in the hydrogen space. The process is also commonly called methane pyrolysis, but I prefer thermolysis. An engineer and founder working in the field pointed out to me that the useful distinction is straightforward: it is heat, not flames, doing the work. … [continued]
Cross-border electricity links increasingly add security and resilience value to their existing roles in markets, adequacy and renewable integration.
Energy independence was an understandable slogan in Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas and electricity prices through the roof. But it was also the wrong lesson. European countries had not erred by depending on one another. They had allowed too much of a critical energy supply to depend … [continued]
Falling battery costs push freight toward electricity everywhere, but inherited road, rail and water systems determine where that transition lands.
Battery costs are falling globally, but freight does not begin from a common starting point. China, India, Europe and the United States move domestic cargo through very different combinations of road, rail and water, so cheaper batteries will not produce one standard freight-electrification pathway. Using the best comparable data I … [continued]
A paid-off old pickup can be rational to keep today. Affordable electric trucks and targeted scrappage can make its eventual replacement rational too.
A reader who owns a hand-me-down 1995 Dodge Ram plans to keep repairing it until rust, gasoline prices or regulation finally stop him. I think he is making a rational household decision. The truck is paid for, he knows how to maintain it, and a repair bill of hundreds or … [continued]
