Unless you’ve had your head firmly buried in sand recently, you’ll be well aware that not everything in the hydrogen sector always looks rosy. So, this week, let’s get some bad news out of the way first.

In Germany, despite previous “agreement with the German federal government to receive €1.3bn in financial support to build a hydrogen-based DRI and EAF facility”, ArcelorMittal has decided that it’s “impossible” to move forward with such plans “at its flat steelmaking sites in Bremen and Eisenhüttenstadt”.

The reasons it states include “high electricity prices, weak steel demand, uncompetitive hydrogen economics, and policy uncertainty” (so pretty much everything). The trigger for turning down this €1bn+ in support now comes about because the company “was contractually required to start construction by June 2025”, if it was to receive the cash.

Although ArcelorMittal still plans to proceed with EAFs (electric arc furnaces) “where electricity is more affordable and policy support is clearer”, perhaps the row back on enthusiasm for hydrogen should come as no surprise: “the company froze final investment decisions on green hydrogen DRI projects last November due to slow policy progress”.

Also in the gloomy corner is Air Products, which has “scrapped plans to build a large-scale green hydrogen import and production project in the Port of Immingham, UK”.

This was a project “set to import green hydrogen from Air Products’ 2.2GW Neom project” as well as “produce its own volumes from a 300MW plant”. As is often the case, the blame was shunted onto policymakers, with the company reckoning that “ministers have not offered enough support for the development” (by which they presumably mean ‘money’).

Those same UK ministers would presumably hit back at claims of lack of commitment to the hydrogen sector by pointing to this week’s “£500m boost for hydrogen”, which was allocated within the government’s latest spending review.

The announcement of this half-billion spend describes it as “new funding to create the UK’s first regional hydrogen transport and storage network”, with the aim of supporting “manufacturing sectors likely to require hydrogen like iron, steel, glass, chemicals and ceramics” along with “sectors including refineries and heavy transport”. Power also gets a mention, with the UK government already known to be keen on the idea of using hydrogen as “long-term energy storage that can be deployed during peak demand periods”.