Scaling hydrogen: from pilot projects to industry

After years of announcements, trials and demonstration projects, hydrogen has entered a more concrete and selective phase. The central question is no longer only whether this technology can contribute to the energy transition, but which projects are truly capable of moving from pilot scale to industrial scale.

This is where a decisive part of hydrogen’s credibility is at stake. Proving that a technology works under controlled conditions is only the first step. Producing, integrating and using hydrogen continuously, safely, competitively and reliably within real industrial systems is far more complex.

Hydrogen scale-up, therefore, is not simply a matter of increasing size. It means building larger plants, reducing costs, developing mature supply chains, standardising technologies and components, creating adequate infrastructure and connecting production to stable industrial demand. In other words, it means turning hydrogen from a technological promise into an industrial value chain.

Hydrogen can no longer be described only as an emerging technology. In recent years, the sector has made an important leap forward: alongside demonstration projects, there are now operational plants, initiatives under construction and investments already committed at industrial scale.

According to the Hydrogen Council’s Global Hydrogen Compass 2025, committed investments worldwide have reached around USD 110 billion, supporting more than 500 projects that are already beyond the final investment decision, under construction or operational. Committed capacity exceeds 6 million tonnes per year of clean hydrogen, of which around 1 million tonnes per year is already operational.

These figures show that hydrogen has moved beyond the purely experimental phase. We are no longer looking only at a pipeline of intentions, but at a sector that is beginning to build real assets, infrastructure, production capacity and industrial expertise.

At the same time, the transition to industrial scale makes the gap between announced projects and projects that can actually be delivered more visible. Market maturity is no longer measured only by the number of initiatives in the pipeline, but by the ability to reach final investment decisions, close supply agreements, guarantee operational continuity and connect production and demand in an economically sustainable way.

This is the new phase of hydrogen: less focused on announcing new possibilities and more oriented towards the concrete delivery of solid, financeable projects that are integrated into industrial systems.

Scaling hydrogen does not simply mean producing more of it. Plant size is certainly important because it allows fixed costs to be spread across larger volumes, improves asset efficiency and makes the final cost more competitive. But scale also introduces new complexity.

When a project moves from the pilot phase to industrial production, its technical, economic and organisational requirements change. It becomes essential to guarantee operational continuity, consistent quality of the hydrogen produced, plant safety and integration with existing industrial processes. Testing a technology in a demonstration environment is one thing; integrating it into a production chain where shutdowns, instability or variations in quality can have a direct impact on industrial performance is quite another.

Scale also requires stable access to renewable or low-carbon energy, transport and storage infrastructure, compression systems, adequate logistics and long-term supply contracts. Without these elements, even a technologically advanced plant risks remaining isolated, underused or economically fragile.

For this reason, hydrogen scale-up is not only a quantitative matter. It is a question of reliability, quality and integration. The challenge is not to build larger individual projects, but to create industrial ecosystems in which production, infrastructure, demand and technologies can grow together.

From this perspective, the maturation of hydrogen will depend less and less on the availability of individual innovative solutions, and increasingly on the ability to turn them into replicable, standardised and reliable systems. This is the typical transition of any technology that aims to become an industry: from prototype to product, from pilot project to value chain, from experimentation to large-scale production.

The maturation of the hydrogen market also depends on an increasingly clear distinction between announced projects and projects that have actually moved forward. In recent years, the global pipeline has filled with initiatives, memoranda, industrial plans and national targets. But not every announcement automatically turns into plants, infrastructure and production capacity.

This is where Final Investment Decisions (FID) become a key indicator. A project that reaches FID is no longer just an intention: it is an initiative that has passed a threshold of technical, economic and financial maturity, and for which investors have decided to commit capital to its implementation. For this reason, looking at FID+ projects — projects that are already in the implementation or operational phase — makes it easier to distinguish between the market’s theoretical potential and the actual capacity that may come online in the coming years.

According to the International Energy Agency, the pipeline of low-emissions hydrogen production projects has undergone a significant correction. For the first time, potential production by 2030 based on announced projects has decreased: cancellations and delays have reduced expected capacity from 49 million tonnes per year reported in 2024 to 37 million tonnes per year in 2025. This reduction does not mean that the sector has come to a halt. On the contrary, it shows that the market is entering a more selective phase, in which the financial robustness, demand availability, cost sustainability and execution credibility of projects are being progressively tested.

The IEA also underlines that, despite the reduction in the announced pipeline, the capacity of projects that are already operational or have reached final investment decision could still grow significantly by 2030. In other words, the sector is moving from an expansion logic based on announcements to a consolidation logic based on projects that are actually financed and buildable.

Producing hydrogen on an industrial scale is one of the essential conditions for reducing its costs. Pilot and demonstration plants are indispensable for validating technologies, configurations and operating models, but they are unlikely to achieve the economic competitiveness required by a mature market. The reason is simple: at a small scale, a significant share of costs remains concentrated across limited production volumes.

When plant size increases, by contrast, many fixed costs can be spread across larger quantities of hydrogen produced. Project engineering, permitting, auxiliary systems, electrical connections, compression, storage and distribution infrastructure, as well as maintenance and operational management activities, have a very different impact when applied to a small demonstration plant rather than to an asset designed to operate at industrial scale.

Economies of scale therefore make it possible to improve the unit cost of hydrogen, especially when the plant reaches a high utilisation rate and can operate steadily over time. Building larger plants is not enough: they must be designed to operate continuously, integrated with an adequate energy supply and connected to sufficiently predictable demand. Otherwise, higher installed capacity may not automatically translate into lower production costs.

For this reason, scale-up is not only about the physical size of plants, but about how capital, infrastructure and operations are optimised together. An industrial project must be able to reduce the cost per kilogram produced, while also ensuring reliability, plant availability and compatibility with the needs of end customers. This is what distinguishes a large plant from a truly scalable one.

Hydrogen scale-up cannot be based on isolated projects. For a plant to be truly sustainable from an industrial perspective, production, infrastructure and demand must grow together. This is the logic behind industrial hubs and Hydrogen Valleys: territorial ecosystems in which hydrogen is produced, distributed and used in a coordinated way, reducing the risk of underused assets or systems that are difficult to integrate.

This approach is consistent with the work of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, which supports the transition from research and innovation to deployment across the entire European clean hydrogen value chain. The challenge, in fact, is not only to develop new technologies, but to create the conditions for them to be demonstrated, replicated and integrated into real industrial contexts.

This is why hydrogen growth will start above all from the most robust use cases: refining, chemicals, fertilisers, steel, selected heavy transport segments and, more broadly, sectors where direct electrification is difficult, insufficient or less economically efficient. Hydrogen does not need to be “everywhere”: it needs to be available where it can make a concrete contribution to decarbonisation.

At this stage, long-term contracts also become decisive. Offtake agreements give producers greater visibility, help make investments bankable and reduce uncertainty for suppliers, industrial customers and investors. They are one of the tools that can turn a promising technology into a financeable industrial project.

Scaling hydrogen does not only mean producing more of it. It means ensuring operational continuity, quality, safety and integration with downstream industrial processes. For many uses, hydrogen is not an undifferentiated commodity: purity, pressure, availability and supply reliability can have a direct impact on plant performance and the continuity of production processes.

This is why scale-up requires increasingly close integration between electrolysers, renewable or low-carbon energy sources, the electricity grid, storage systems, compression, transport, storage and end users. This is where technological maturity must meet industrial capability: reliable components, manufacturing quality, operational experience and replicable solutions become essential factors in moving from pilot project to deployment.

The next phase of hydrogen will therefore be less about multiplying announcements and more about the ability to build a solid value chain. Some projects will be resized or cancelled; others will become strategic infrastructure. The difference will be made by real demand, investment, mature supply chains, standardisation and stable policies.

In this sense, the hydrogen transition may become less spectacular, but more concrete. Success will no longer be measured only by the theoretical size of the pipeline, but by the ability to turn selected projects into operational, reliable plants integrated into the industrial systems where hydrogen can make a real contribution to decarbonisation.