WARSAW, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Europe's hydrogen ambitions are entering a more demanding phase, as attention shifts from technological breakthroughs and policy targets to cost, market demand and supply-chain resilience.
Those issues dominated discussions at the 21st International Symposium on Hydrogen Power Theoretical and Engineering Solutions (HYPOTHESIS 2026), held in Warsaw from Aug. 23 to 27, pointing to a broader challenge: turning hydrogen from a promising decarbonization tool into a viable industry without creating new dependencies.
A COMPLEMENT, NOT A CURE-ALL
Europe sharply reshaped its energy supplies after the escalation of the Ukraine crisis, but its reliance on external sources has not disappeared.
Imported fossil fuels still account for 57 percent of energy consumed in the European Union and cost the bloc around 340 billion euros (about 394 billion U.S. dollars) in 2025, according to the European Commission. The Commission now describes faster clean-energy deployment as a socio-economic, competitiveness and security imperative.
Jakub Kupecki, chairman of HYPOTHESIS 2026 and director of Poland's National Centre for Nuclear Research, told Xinhua that the key to success and energy security lies in diversifying both supply sources and technologies which are used.
"Europe should avoid moving from one dependency into another imbalanced relationships," he said.
Hydrogen's role is also becoming more clearly defined as renewable power expands.
Jack Brouwer, director of the Clean Energy Institute, University of California, Irvine, said rising shares of wind and solar bring new challenges including curtailment, negative electricity prices and transmission constraints. Electrolysis offers a way to turn electricity into chemical energy and connect power systems with fuel and chemical markets, he said.
The case for hydrogen, in other words, is becoming less about using it everywhere and more about filling gaps where direct electrification is difficult, including manufacturing of steel, cement, chemicals.
THE COMMERCIAL GAP
Technical progress, however, has yet to create a mature low-carbon hydrogen market.
Global hydrogen demand surpassed 100 million tonnes in 2025, but low-emissions hydrogen production only reach almost 1 million tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Investment data show a wide gap between announced ambitions and projects likely to materialize.
The IEA pointed out that investment momentum slowed in 2025. Committed projects and those with strong potential to be in operation by 2030 declined from 10 million tonnes to just above 6 million tonnes, due to delays in investment decisions, the IEA said in its 2026 Global Hydrogen Review.
Kupecki said taking a technology from the laboratory to the market requires "time, patience and funding."
The "hydrogen hype" of earlier years has cooled somewhat, which gives the industry time to re-examine technology pathways, assess costs under new economic realities, and re-define current priorities of companies and the national economies, he added.
RESILIENCE WITHOUT ISOLATION
Beyond cost, demand and investment, Europe faces another question: how to build hydrogen supply chains that are both resilient and competitive.
The EU's Net-Zero Industry Act has already brought supply-chain resilience into clean-technology procurement and renewable-energy auctions. Guidance issued by the European Commission in July said public spending should not reward price alone, but also take account of sustainability and resilience.
"Europe hopes to maintain a degree of technological independence, but this definitely does not mean not cooperating with other regions," Kupecki said, adding that market, value chains and competition are now global.
The issue is particularly relevant for electrolyzer, a core piece of equipment for producing renewable hydrogen.
IEA data show that China has emerged as the dominant market for new electrolyzer deployment. Global installed electrolysis capacity doubled in 2025 to exceed 4 GW, with China behind nearly three-quarters of new installations.
Kupecki noted that Polish and Chinese research institutions have already cooperated in areas such as materials and system designed, and as the technology matures, bilateral cooperation is expected to extend further into manufacturing, trade, and market applications.
"China can definitely be a wonderful off-taker of technologies," he said. ■