Only about 4% to 7% of those big 'green hydrogen' projects people announce actually ever get finished on time.
March 26, 2026
Original Paper
Attrition-Aware, Multi-Architecture Probabilistic Forecasting of Global and Regional Low-Carbon Hydrogen Deployment to 2050
SSRN · 6470542
The Takeaway
Governments and institutional investors treat 'announced' hydrogen capacity as a reliable metric for future green energy supply. However, this study reveals a massive execution gap, showing that nearly 95% of projects are delayed or abandoned before commissioning, making current net-zero projections based on these 'pipelines' almost entirely illusory.
From the abstract
Achieving mid-century net-zero targets for low-caron hydrogen requires rapid and regionally balanced deployment, yet empirical evidence shows that only 4-7% of announced green-hydrogen capacity reaches commissioning on schedule, revealing a persistent ambition-implementation gap. Most institutional, national strategies and academic projections still rely on deterministic, single-scenario, plant-level assumptions and often treat announced capacity as future operation supply, while existing studie