Climate activists and supporters high in the White House have long promised that green hydrogen was key to replacing fossil fuels in difficult-to-electrify sectors, brushing aside critics’ concerns wholesale.

Now, the list of failed hydrogen projects has grown quite long, squandering billions of dollars on yet another futile climate initiative. 

An American company that specializes in hydrogen officially canceled plans to build a green hydrogen plant at the Port of Antwerp. In mid-August, Plug Power cited “uncertainty about economic viability” in explaining the cancellation, which will force the company to take a $15.9 million loss. 

According to energy newsletter, FCW, in August 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy withdrew Plug Power’s loan guarantee of $1.66 billion after the first drawdown deadline lapsed without any funding being disbursed, marking the withdrawal of a crucial source of funding for its various plants that were under consideration in the United States.

Hydrogen enjoyed quite a bit of hype during the Biden-Harris administration as it promised to replace a lot of fossil fuel use. Even early on, researchers and industry critics expressed grave doubts that the industry had a future. Plug Power’s latest cancellation is but one in a string of failures that are vindicating critics who said the industry was all hype. 

No feasible, direct means to replace that energy with electricity produced by wind and solar

Hydrogen can be produced using different feedstocks, including coal and natural gas. Hydrogen produced with an electrolysis process powered by wind and solar that breaks water into hydrogen and oxygen is called green hydrogen. 

While most climate policies are focused on reducing emissions resulting from electricity generation and passenger cars, industry and heavy transportation produce a large share of energy demand and global emissions. Virtually all of that energy comes from fossil fuels, and there is no feasible, direct means to replace that energy with electricity produced by wind and solar. 

Anti-fossil fuel advocates saw green hydrogen as the path to net-zero and their dream of a world powered entirely by energy from the wind and sun. Net-zero means the amount of greenhouse gas emissions added to the atmosphere equals the amount removed.

Canary Media, a climate activist publication that was founded by the anti-fossil fuel Rocky Mountain Institute, predicted in 2024 that green hydrogen would spur a Gulf Coast boom. Microsoft founder Bill Gates called it the “Swiss army knife” of decarbonization. 

Skeptics glossed over, dismissed and denied

As with many climate schemes over the years, there were some key shortcomings with the plan that were glossed over, dismissed and denied.Hydrogen is not an energy source, it’s an energy carrier. For example, sunlight is an energy source, and the electricity generated by a solar panel is a carrier. It takes about three units of electricity to produce one unit of hydrogen. On top of that, the gas is difficult to transport, store and utilize, driving up costs.

“In other words, the hydrogen economy requires scads of electricity (a high-quality form of energy) to make a tiny molecule that’s hard to handle, difficult to store, and expensive to use,” energy expert Robert Bryce explained in his 2024 Subtack article, “The H Stands For Hype.” 

A 2024 Harvard study found prices for hydrogen made it a prohibitively expensive strategy to reduce emissions. Even if production costs fell in line with predictions, the study concluded, storage and distribution costs would prevent it from being a cost-competitive solution to global emissions. 

Of 624 EU projects, only 59 have been completed and 4 others canceled

As is often the case with green energy schemes, these challenges didn’t deter those who prize emission reductions above all other considerations. The Biden-Harris administration put up $8 billion in taxpayer funds to develop a hydrogen economy in the U.S., which included support for seven hydrogen hubs. 

In January 2025, the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office also provided Plug Power a $1.66 billion loan guarantee for up to six hydrogen projects. By November of that year, the company suspended work on the projects the loan supported in 2024. 

Bulgarian energy writer Irina Slav explains on her Substack that a similar effort to develop a hydrogen economy in Europe proceeded with taxpayer support and a failure to contend with the challenges of using the gas. 

“Since 2020, Slav wrote, 624 hydrogen-related projects have been announced in Europe,” Slav wrote. “Of these, the majority were for green hydrogen production, with the rest covering pipelines, storage, and other infrastructure. Of those 624 projects, only 59 have been completed and put into operation. Another 74 have been cancelled. The rest are at a feasibility study phase or put on hold.”

Tallying failures by the numbers

Among those projects is Plug Power’s Antwerp plant, which was designed as a 100 MW electrolyzer plant that would produce about 35 tonnes per day of liquid and gaseous green hydrogen. The plant’s power would “utilize wind and solar,” according to the company, and using the electrolysis process, it would use water to produce the hydrogen.

The company was facing troubles long before this latest news. In March 2025, Bryce reported on Plug Power's financial woes, which included a $2.1 billion loss for 2024. The company is also facing a lawsuit alleging it and senior executives misled investors. 

The failure of the project comes at the end of a long list of failures that squandered billions in tax dollars.

In October 2024, Bryce documented eight failed projects in Europe, Canada and the U.S. In July of this year, Reuters compiled a list of over a dozen projects that have been canceled, postponed or scaled back in Europe, Asia, Australia and the U.S.

A study published in Nature Energy tracked 190 projects over three years and found that only 7% of global capacity announcements were finished on schedule. 

“Green hydrogen is critical for decarbonizing hard-to-electrify sectors, but it faces high costs and investment risks,” the study notes. 

Climate activists often label critics of climate-action plans “climate delayers” because they sow doubt in the mandates and schemes the activists promise will work. The hydrogen industry continues to tally up one failure after another, each one representing billions in wasted investment and tax dollars. 

While those resources were flowing to projects that were doomed to fail, projects that may have actually worked have to be realized.