In the US, the newly installed board and CEO of Air Products have been casting their beady eyes across some big, previously planned projects.

I say ‘previously’, because the result of that scrutiny is the cancellation of three projects, including two hydrogen ones, and a resulting “pre-tax charge not to exceed $3.1 billion in its fiscal 2025 second quarter, primarily to write down assets and terminate contractual commitments”.

Specifically, Air Products “has terminated the agreement with World Energy for the Sustainable Aviation Fuel expansion project in Paramount, California” and “cancelled its plans to construct a 35 metric ton per day facility to produce green liquid hydrogen in Massena, New York” (along with “related liquid hydrogen distribution and dispensing operations”).

The first of these has met its demise because of “challenging commercial aspects”, whilst the second reflects “recent regulatory developments rendering existing hydroelectric power supply ineligible for the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit (45V)”, plus “slower than expected development of a hydrogen mobility market in the region”.

Obviously keeping an eye on the opportunities arising from regulatory and other uncertainties on one side of the Atlantic Ocean is the region on the other – Europe.

There, the European Commission has published a communication entitled “The Clean Industrial Deal: a joint roadmap for competitiveness and decarbonisation” (CID). It describes the document as “a non-legislative initiative that outlines the Commission’s roadmap to enhance competitiveness and accelerate the decarbonisation of industry in Europe, with the focus on energy-intensive industries and the clean-tech sector”.

One of the sections in this new CID is “Boosting Clean Supply and Demand”, which is where hydrogen comes into play.

The Commission still “believes that hydrogen has a central role to play in decarbonising the EU energy system, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors” and thus remains keen to promote its uptake.

To follow up on its existing definition of ‘renewable hydrogen’, it “will adopt in Q1 2025 a delegated act on low carbon hydrogen” too, to “clarify the rules” on how to produce it. In particular, this means ‘blue’ hydrogen should soon enjoy the same regulatory certainty in Europe as ‘green’.