Hydrogen's Real Market Is Measured in Mass, Not Energy Units
Global hydrogen demand surpassed 100 million tonnes in 2025, with nearly all consumption occurring in traditional industrial sectors like refining and ammonia production. The article argues that converting hydrogen volumes to megawatt-hours obscures the fact that buyers purchase it by weight as a chemical feedstock. While exchanges like EEX convert prices to €/MWh for comparison with electricity and gas, that framing does not change the underlying market dynamics.
The article emphasizes that hydrogen’s dominant demand remains in industrial feedstocks—refining, ammonia, methanol, and direct-reduced iron—where buyers transact by tonne, not by energy content. Converting to megawatt-hours (using a lower heating value of ~33.33 kWh/kg) is mathematically valid but obscures that hydrogen competes in chemical markets, not energy markets. The European Energy Exchange’s HYDRIX benchmark deliberately converts prices to €/MWh for cross-commodity comparison, yet this framing risks implying substitutability with electricity or gas that does not yet exist for most applications. Proposed energy uses—heating, power generation, storage—must first win against incumbent services on delivered cost and performance before they become genuine hydrogen demand.
This framing could influence how investors and policymakers allocate resources. If hydrogen is misread as an energy commodity, funding may flow toward speculative power and heating projects rather than proven industrial decarbonization. Conversely, recognizing the tonne-based market may accelerate cost reductions in existing chemical uses, enabling future energy applications. Society could benefit from clearer metrics, but only if decision-makers avoid conflating unit conversions with market reality, potentially slowing premature infrastructure bets.