Your core statement is that hydrogen is overrated. However, many -not all- of your points seem to focus purely on hydrogen benefits in Europe, while the companies are active worldwide. How would you classify that?
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@Hisager First of all: I think the question is really nice. I'm mainly interested in the shares of "green" hydrogen producers, because today's hydrogen industry is already established and earning good money with it. So that's where the pace is set for the future, and that's exactly the problem. All these projects, which are being planned, realized or partly in operation worldwide, do not yet have any significance. So how can they be valued at the stock market with nonsensical billions if there is no substance behind them? The entire forecasts of demand are just diagrams that someone once drew up. There are no tangible facts behind them. The only tangible fact behind it is the RepowerEU plan with binding targets. Another such fact would be the financing. Nobody wants to pay for it, but everybody wants it. Neither the EU, nor the U.S., nor China could ever come up with the investment and funding amounts that would be needed, and the aforementioned "established" players will be very reluctant to squeeze their balance sheets in coming high-interest phases and thus scare off investors.
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@Hannes_SK My three years of semi-academic career have prepared me very well for this question 😉 Okay, so you are primarily concerned with the new players. But what about the established players who can't profit from current/future subsidies, increasing demand (also/especially? for green hydrogen), favorable production conditions in sun/stream/wind-rich regions, so I think that additional business cases are currently emerging for all of them and that when companies have good technologies or competitive pressure starts to emerge, they sometimes pay a bit more for a takeover, especially for energy companies that often have a good cash flow. That would be at least my perception. That is why the newcomers are perhaps somewhat overvalued is quite possible, but Tesla is also holding its own, although I would have expected a lot of optimism there. In general, I currently have the feeling that there is enough money available, but it is more likely to fail due to innovation or the right allocation. Now, however, in the first post you write less precisely about the new players, but about green hydrogen in general. Do I understand you correctly that you would estimate it in such a way that the established companies have no large interest in production (and transport, sales) - infrastructure halt - of green hydrogen? Or how would you see their commitment in this area? (Question because of curiosity and hardly any contact with the industry except for the general market and media events).
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@Hisager I don't believe you.😄 I think that the first post outweighs my views. There I also described the situation with the "shark tank" quite well. The "sharks" snatch the small fish and their progress as soon as the market values are in the basement. Further correct and important: The price. No one, neither commercial nor private, will be willing to pay higher prices. Therefore, "green" hydrogen must be further commercialized. However, I don't see these signs at all on the H2 market. And now comes a point to give green hydrogen credit for: So far, it's all only on a pilot scale in Europe and unsuitable for large-scale industry. Even the pilot projects in Germany are failing because of the high prices. See WunH2, Bavaria's showcase project. The next question would then be: What is cheap, what is expensive? What margins can be expected here? And that's exactly the point regarding geopolitics: Do you honestly believe that African emerging markets would not rather use such future technologies to dramatically increase their own economic power instead of becoming some kind of neocolony again? My personal assessment is mainly about the fact that the stock market is giving far too much weight to the facts here at the present time. One can speculate about such values when the time and the market is right. But it is like the dotcom bubble. Everything is still in its infancy, the dreams burst and investors have to wait another 30+ years before a positive return can be expected.
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