The long-term investment challenge of clean hydrogen
At Gulf Energy Information’s ChemE Show 2026 powered by ACHEMA, Tony White, Head of Vertical Market Chemical, Glass & Energy U.S. Sales, Siemens Industry, Inc.; and David Maher, U.S. Director—Hydrogen and Carbon Capture, Linde, participated in a panel discussion, titled "Scaling Clean Hydrogen in North America: Reality, Economics & Infrastructure.”
The discussion covered the challenges with scaling up hydrogen (H2) projects and developers attempting to go too big, too fast. On one hand, the scale must be large enough to offset the costs and reduce the levelized cost of H2 (LCOH), but, on the other hand, the project cannot be overly ambitious.
“You're making a company bet on the long-term that decarbonization is going to be a part of your future. You're going to need 10, 15, 20 yrs to get a return on investment for the multi-hundred-million-dollars required for the project,” said Maher.
“You need commitments from your partners, the suppliers, the technology providers and off-takers across the full value chain before FID (final investment decision).” Maher went on to describe two blue ammonia projects that went to FID in the U.S. Gulf Coast and two blue H2 projects in Canada.
White followed up by explaining how high-fidelity digital twins can be used to create models that determine the LCOH. These models are used to vet the projects and validate the FID by reducing the risk to investors. Digital twins are then used to create an operator training simulator (OTS) that can assist in training personnel. The OTS and digital twin can also be integrated into process-based automation and process-based optimization to streamline workflows.
“The company that has the best cohesion between their digital data from what they think they’re going to build to what they’re producing out in the field is the company that’s going to win,” White said. “It’s going to be the company that is able to scale and produce a product at a lower cost and a higher yield.”
Story by: Tyler Campbell, Editor, H2Tech
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