Developers behind the world’s largest planned green hydrogen project hope a growing global thirst for emission-free fuels will pay dividends.
6 min
Can a multibillion-dollar project in the Saudi desert jump-start the demand for green hydrogen, an elusive energy source that could help eliminate carbon emissions from vehicles, power plants and heavy industry?
The allure of hydrogen is undeniable. Unlike oil and natural gas, it doesn’t emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases when burned. It’s more easily stored than electricity generated by wind turbines and solar farms, and it can be transported by ship or pipeline. Green hydrogen, which is produced using renewable energy sources, is especially attractive as a fuel. It’s made from water rather than methane or other hydrocarbons.
But those who foresee a green hydrogen future face a quandary: The high cost of producing the odourless, colourless, flammable gas can be mitigated only by large-scale projects, which in turn make economic sense only if there is a widespread market for green hydrogen. That doesn’t yet exist.
In Neom, a planned megacity of the future now taking shape in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the investors behind the green hydrogen project think they can deliver the chicken and the egg.
The initiative—a joint venture of Neom, U.S. chemical company Air Products & Chemicals Inc., and Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power—will invest $5 billion to build what will be the world’s largest green hydrogen production facility. Another $2 billion will be invested in distribution infrastructure in consumer markets around the world, primarily to fuel industrial vehicles and public buses.
Plans call for the sprawling facility, which isn’t yet under construction, to produce 650 tons of green hydrogen a day starting in 2025. The facility’s output will dwarf that of a green hydrogen plant in Québec that produces about nine tons a day, making it the largest such facility in the world. The Neom project exemplifies the Kingdom’s ambitious plan to diversify away from oil and natural gas and showcase Neom as a global hub for technology and green energy.
One of Neom’s main advantages in what could become a global race to develop green hydrogen is that the city’s location along the Red Sea possesses world-class solar and wind power, according to Peter Terium, head of Neom’s energy sector. Solar will power the plant during the day, wind at night, he says.
It isn’t easy to find a site with strong enough wind and sun, as well as proximity to a port, Mr. Terium says. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be the first to announce an investment of this size,” he says.
Other countries are following suit. Australia, for example, has expedited the approval of a $36 billion project in the Outback in the western part of the country that will generate 26,000 megawatts of renewable electricity to be used to power the green hydrogen production.
Most hydrogen made for commercial use is so-called grey hydrogen, which is produced by splitting the hydrocarbon molecules in coal or natural gas. This process emits carbon. Green hydrogen, on the other hand, emits no carbon because it relies upon a process called electrolysis, in which electricity is used to strip hydrogen atoms from water molecules.
Air Products is the world’s largest producer of hydrogen, most of which now is derived from fossil fuels. But through its involvement with Neom, the Allentown, Pa.-based corporation is betting big that many countries will pay a premium for green hydrogen to meet carbon reduction targets, according to chief executive Seifi Ghasemi.
The Neom project aims to produce enough hydrogen to fuel about 20,000 buses a day. But rather than being piped or shipped to end users as gaseous or liquid hydrogen, the hydrogen will first be converted into ammonia, which is denser and therefore more economical to ship. After being sent by boat to Asia, the U.S. and Europe, the ammonia will be converted back into hydrogen before being sent to filling stations built by Air Products.
“The only thing [the customer] has to do is buy fuel cell vehicles to use the hydrogen,” Mr. Ghasemi says. “Hydrogen will become, 30 years from now, like oil is today.”
It’s a bold prediction that would require significant changes to the way we use fuel and electric power. Not all experts see that happening because of the sheer cost and magnitude of redesigning energy infrastructure around the world. That would require changing everything from vehicles to household applications.
Such a world would look markedly different. Filling stations would dispense hydrogen instead of gasoline. Hydrogen could be piped into homes to feed heaters and gas stoves. And unlike wind or solar, it could provide a steady supply of electricity for large power users, such as data centres and manufacturing hubs, when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
If it can be scaled, green hydrogen could also help solve several big challenges in a lower-carbon economy: powering heavy-duty trucks and ships without reliance on giant batteries, providing round-the-clock electricity to supplement intermittent supplies from wind and solar and decarbonizing heavy industrial processes including steel and concrete manufacturing.
Julio Friedmann, a senior research scholar at Columbia University, says green hydrogen’s diverse applications could help it become the “Swiss Army knife” of the green energy economy, as states and countries pledge to reach net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades.
Among energy nerds, hydrogen has long been the butt of a joke: It’s the fuel of the future, and probably always will be. The most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen has seen rounds of hype before, most recently in the early 2000s, when it was promoted as a transportation fuel amid fears about declining reserves of fossil fuels.
Some investors remain deeply sceptical of hydrogen, citing its high cost and the inevitable challenges of building infrastructure necessary to deploy it at scale. Kerrisdale Capital, a New York-based investment firm, is shorting shares in a fuel-cell maker whose share price has skyrocketed this year alongside other fuel-cell and alternative-energy stocks in the hope that the companies will be big players in a “hydrogen economy.” Fuel cells use chemical reactions to produce electricity from hydrogen and oxygen.
“The ‘hydrogen economy’ will never happen,” the firm wrote in a research note. “Hydrogen energy will have only very niche use cases.”
Increased regulation of greenhouse gases, growing investor pressure on companies to reduce carbon emissions and technological advances have many thinking the hydrogen hype is real this time. Management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that hydrogen could account for 14% of power used in the U.S. by 2050, from next to nothing today.
Another factor in the heightened interest in green hydrogen is the steep decline in the price of renewable energy, which Mr. Friedmann says now accounts for 50% to 70% of the cost of green hydrogen. The cost of building wind and solar farms has fallen in recent years as technology costs have declined and more projects are built at scale. Wind and solar now rival natural gas as the lowest-cost means of power generation.
“You are going to see a lot of countries and states going after hydrogen,” Mr. Friedmann says.
Along with the Neom partners, other investors big and small are betting that green hydrogen is finally positioned to realize its full potential. Global expenditures on hydrogen projects are projected to top $400 billion between now and 2030, followed by more than $2 trillion in spending from 2030 to 2050, investment bank Evercore ISI estimates.
Some auto makers, including Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., are developing vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells, which convert the fuel into electricity.
Several major utility companies, meanwhile, are looking into running power plants on hydrogen instead of natural gas, which is now the nation’s primary fuel for electricity generation. Unlike wind and solar farms, gas plants can run all the time, or fire up quickly to meet peak demand.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest municipal utility, is spearheading a $1.9-billion effort to convert a coal-fired power plant in Utah to run on natural gas and hydrogen produced with wind and solar power.
In northwestern New Mexico, developers are planning to spend up to $2 billion on a hydrogen-fueled power plant to serve electricity customers throughout the West starting in 2024. The Libertad Power Project, as the plant initiative is known, will use so-called blue hydrogen, which is produced by carbon-capture technology, before transitioning to green hydrogen as it becomes cheaper and more widely available. Carbon capture involves catching the carbon atoms upon production and storing them so they can’t enter the atmosphere.
For all its promise, green hydrogen faces many hurdles. These include the intermittence of solar and wind power and the high cost of electrolyzers, complex systems that traditionally have required large capital investments but which are now falling in price. Despite declines in the cost of renewable energy, green hydrogen production plants will need high utilisation rates, or almost round-the-clock power, to make them profitable.
Hydrogen is hard to store in gaseous form and is expensive to liquefy, which is why the Neom project plans to convert it to ammonia for transport. It can also weaken metal on contact, making it difficult to transport via pipeline unless it is blended with natural gas or other substances.
Columbia’s Mr. Friedmann says the barriers to widespread use of green hydrogen are related not to technology but to infrastructure. Governments and companies will need to invest heavily in power grids, ports, pipelines and fueling stations that can accommodate hydrogen. The costs of doing that will be borne across the global economy if governments implement sound public policy to drive market investment, he says.
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Subsidised minivans, no income taxes: Countries have rolled out a range of benefits to encourage bigger families, with no luck
7 min
Imagine if having children came with more than $150,000 in cheap loans, a subsidised minivan and a lifetime exemption from income taxes.
Would people have more kids? The answer, it seems, is no.
These are among the benefits—along with cheap child care, extra vacation and free fertility treatments—that have been doled out to parents in different parts of Europe, a region at the forefront of the worldwide baby shortage. Europe’s overall population shrank during the pandemic and is on track to contract by about 40 million by 2050, according to United Nations statistics.
Birthrates have been falling across the developed world since the 1960s. But the decline hit Europe harder and faster than demographers expected—a foreshadowing of the sudden drop in the U.S. fertility rate in recent years.
Reversing the decline in birthrates has become a national priority among governments worldwide, including in China and Russia , where Vladimir Putin declared 2024 “the year of the family.” In the U.S., both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have pledged to rethink the U.S.’s family policies . Harris wants to offer a $6,000 baby bonus. Trump has floated free in vitro fertilisation and tax deductions for parents.
Europe and other demographically challenged economies in Asia such as South Korea and Singapore have been pushing back against the demographic tide with lavish parental benefits for a generation. Yet falling fertility has persisted among nearly all age groups, incomes and education levels. Those who have many children often say they would have them even without the benefits. Those who don’t say the benefits don’t make enough of a difference.
Two European countries devote more resources to families than almost any other nation: Hungary and Norway. Despite their programs, they have fertility rates of 1.5 and 1.4 children for every woman, respectively—far below the replacement rate of 2.1, the level needed to keep the population steady. The U.S. fertility rate is 1.6.
Demographers suggest the reluctance to have kids is a fundamental cultural shift rather than a purely financial one.
“I used to say to myself, I’m too young. I have to finish my bachelor’s degree. I have to find a partner. Then suddenly I woke up and I was 28 years old, married, with a car and a house and a flexible job and there were no more excuses,” said Norwegian Nancy Lystad Herz. “Even though there are now no practical barriers, I realised that I don’t want children.”
Both Hungary and Norway spend more than 3% of GDP on their different approaches to promoting families—more than the amount they spend on their militaries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Hungary says in recent years its spending on policies for families has exceeded 5% of GDP. The U.S. spends around 1% of GDP on family support through child tax credits and programs aimed at low-income Americans.
Hungary’s subsidised housing loan program has helped almost 250,000 families buy or upgrade their homes, the government says. Orsolya Kocsis, a 28-year-old working in human resources, knows having kids would help her and her husband buy a larger house in Budapest, but it isn’t enough to change her mind about not wanting children.
“If we were to say we’ll have two kids, we could basically buy a new house tomorrow,” she said. “But morally, I would not feel right having brought a life into this world to buy a house.”
Promoting baby-making, known as pro natalism, is a key plank of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ’s broader populist agenda . Hungary’s biennial Budapest Demographic Summit has become a meeting ground for prominent conservative politicians and thinkers. Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, Trump’s vice president pick, have lauded Orbán’s family policies.
Orbán portrays having children inside what he has called a “traditional” family model as a national duty, as well as an alternative to immigration for growing the population. The benefits for child-rearing in Hungary are mostly reserved for married, heterosexual, middle-class couples. Couples who divorce lose subsidised interest rates and in some cases have to pay back the support.
Hungary’s population, now less than 10 million, has been shrinking since the 1980s. The country is about the size of Indiana.
“Because there are so few of us, there’s always this fear that we are disappearing,” said Zsuzsanna Szelényi, program director at the CEU Democracy Institute and author of a book on Orbán.
Hungary’s fertility rate collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union and by 2010 was down to 1.25 children for every woman. Orbán, a father of five, and his Fidesz party swept back into power that year after being ousted in the early 2000s. He expanded the family support system over the next decade.
Hungary’s fertility rate rose to 1.6 children for every woman in 2021. Ivett Szalma, an associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, said that like in many other countries, women in Hungary who had delayed having children after the global financial crisis were finally catching up.
Then progress stalled. Hungary’s fertility rate has fallen for the past two years. Around 51,500 babies have been born there this year through August, a 10% drop compared with the same period last year. Many Hungarian women cite underfunded public health and education systems and difficulties balancing work and family as part of their hesitation to have more children.
Anna Nagy, a 35-year-old former lawyer, had her son in January 2021. She received a loan of about $27,300 that she didn’t have to start paying back until he turned 3. Nagy had left her job before getting pregnant but still received government-funded maternity payments, equal to 70% of her former salary, for the first two years and a smaller amount for a third year.
She used to think she wanted two or three kids, but now only wants one. She is frustrated at the implication that demographic challenges are her responsibility to solve. Economists point to increased immigration and a higher retirement age as other offsets to the financial strains on government budgets from a declining population.
“It’s not our duty as Hungarian women to keep the nation alive,” she said.
Hungary is especially generous to families who have several children, or who give birth at younger ages. Last year, the government announced it would restrict the loan program used by Nagy to women under 30. Families who pledge to have three or more children can get more than $150,000 in subsidised loans. Other benefits include a lifetime exemption from personal taxes for mothers with four or more kids, and up to seven extra annual vacation days for both parents.
Under another program that’s now expired, nearly 30,000 families used a subsidy to buy a minivan, the government said.
Critics of Hungary’s family policies say the money is wasted on people who would have had large families anyway. The government has also been criticised for excluding groups such as the minority Roma population and poorer Hungarians. Bank accounts, credit histories and a steady employment history are required for many of the incentives.
Orbán’s press office didn’t respond to requests for comment. Tünde Fűrész, head of a government-backed demographic research institute, disagreed that the policies are exclusionary and said the loans were used more heavily in economically depressed areas.
Government programs weren’t a determining factor for Eszter Gerencsér, 37, who said she and her husband always wanted a big family. They have four children, ages 3 to 10.
They received about $62,800 in low-interest loans through government programs and $35,500 in grants. They used the money to buy and renovate a house outside of Budapest. After she had her fourth child, the government forgave $11,000 of the debt. Her family receives a monthly payment of about $40 a month for each child.
Most Hungarian women stay home with their children until they turn 2, after which maternity payments are reduced. Publicly run nurseries are free for large families like hers. Gerencsér worked on and off between her pregnancies and returned full-time to work, in a civil-service job, earlier this year.
She still thinks Hungarian society is stacked against mothers and said she struggled to find a job because employers worried she would have to take lots of time off.
The country’s international reputation as family-friendly is “what you call good marketing,” she said.
Norway has been incentivising births for decades with generous parental leave and subsidised child care. New parents in Norway can share nearly a year of fully paid leave, or around 14 months at 80% pay. More than three months are reserved for fathers to encourage more equal caregiving. Mothers are entitled to take at least an hour at work to breast-feed or pump.
The government’s goal has never been explicitly to encourage people to have more children, but instead to make it easier for women to balance careers and children, said Trude Lappegard, a professor who researches demography at the University of Oslo. Norway doesn’t restrict benefits for unmarried parents or same-sex couples.
Its fertility rate of 1.4 children per woman has steadily fallen from nearly 2 in 2009. Unlike Hungary, Norway’s population is still growing for now, due mostly to immigration.
“It is difficult to say why the population is having fewer children,” Kjersti Toppe, the Norwegian Minister of Children and Families, said in an email. She said the government has increased monthly payments for parents and has formed a committee to investigate the baby bust and ways to reverse it.
More women in Norway are childless or have only one kid. The percentage of 45-year-old women with three or more children fell to 27.5% last year from 33% in 2010. Women are also waiting longer to have children—the average age at which women had their first child reached 30.3 last year. The global surge in housing costs and a longer timeline for getting established in careers likely plays a role, researchers say. Older first-time mothers can face obstacles: Women 35 and older are at higher risk of infertility and pregnancy complications.
Gina Ekholt, 39, said the government’s policies have helped offset much of the costs of having a child and allowed her to maintain her career as a senior adviser at the nonprofit Save the Children Norway. She had her daughter at age 34 after a round of state-subsidised IVF that cost about $1,600. She wanted to have more children but can’t because of fertility issues.
She receives a monthly stipend of about $160 a month, almost fully offsetting a $190 monthly nursery fee.
“On the economy side, it hasn’t made a bump. What’s been difficult for me is trying to have another kid,” she said. “The notion that we should have more kids, and you’re very selfish if you have only had one…those are the things that took a toll on me.”
Her friend Ewa Sapieżyńska, a 44-year-old Polish-Norwegian writer and social scientist with one son, has helped her see the upside of the one-child lifestyle. “For me, the decision is not about money. It’s about my life,” she said.
