Since our launch, our team constantly works on our list of the 400 largest renewable energy developers in Europe. Furthermore, we created a software tool that enables us to crawl the websites of all firms in our developer list. We used that unique combination to analyze the European renewable energy development market for keywords in the hydrogen industry. Especially due to skyrocketing gas prices, green hydrogen production got a main area of interest for European policy makers and businesses.
Methodology of our keyword-based hydrogen study
In order to analyze the penetration of hydrogen projects for solar and wind energy developers in Europe, we used our Python-based crawling software. First, we searched every website in our list for 45 seconds to find all subpages. This typically yields between 50-150 subpages. Then, every word is analyzed for the keywords “Hydrogen”, “Wasserstoff”, “Hidrogeno”, “Hydrogene”, which represents the translations of hydrogen in German, Spanish and French. In total, we crawled more than 40,000 pages for hydrogen keywords. We also analyzed the percentage of keyword penetration as well as the average rate of keyword occurrences per page. In a really limited amount of cases, the crawler was not able to access the pages due to sophisticated firewalls.
In total, 113 hydrogen mentions
Out of the 407 renewable energy developers in our database, 113 mentioned hydrogen on their page. This results in a keyword coverage of 28%.
Thereof, 56 developers mentioned hydrogen at least 10 times, which is a strong indicator for ongoing and planned projects in the field.
Protium with most occurrences
Most keyword occurrences were found on the websites of two Hydrogen-only players in the field: Protium and Gen2 Energy. Protium develops green hydrogen projects and targets 1 GW of green hydrogen capacity in the UK until 2030. A first project in Teesside is planned with 40MW production capacity.
Hive energy: green hydrogen project pipeline
The developer with most hydrogen keyword occurrences that comes directly from the renewable energy development industry is UK firm Hive Energy. The firm is a global developer of renewable energy with almost 2GW of completed projects and a 22 GW pipeline. Green hydrogen is a central pillar of the firm’s strategy: For example, a 50MW project in Vouzi Mantasia is planned (Greece) or a major 470 MW project in Zambia. Furthermore, the firm wants to build the world’s largest green ammonia plant in Nelson Mandela Bay (South Africa).
AustriaEnergy: 150,000mt green H2 project
Another interesting firm in our top 5 is the Austria Energy Group (here: A-Enviro). The firm was established in Vienna (Austria) in 2006. The firm has developed projects with a capacity over 1GW since then in Europe and Latin America. Now, the firm plans a major project with Ökowind EE GmbH in Chile: a 1.6GW wind power plant is used for water electrolysis and ammonia production. The project will be able to produce 850,000mt green NH3 or 150,000 mt green H2 annually.
Absolute coverage brings new firms in field of view: Engie and ABO Wind
When we look at the number of total mentions of hydrogen keywords, still Protium and Hive Energy are leading the ranking. Also specialized firm Gen2 Energy appears again.
Now, also Engie and Abo Wind, two major European renewable energy firms, namely Engie SA and ABO Wind AG. Engie aims to be a leading player in the global green H2 industry. For example, Engie joined a consortium to build the first French green iron plant together with Plug Power in Fos sur Mer in southern France. Engie will share its renewable know-how in the project.
Also, ABO Wind has several green hydrogen projects in its pipeline, for example a 10 MW wind and solar farm with electrolysers for CO2-free mobility in Germany. In the Netherlands, a 3 MW wind farm is connected to an electrolyser at a ship fueling station.
Conclusion: dedicated players, majors in the field, first projects
Our study showed a few points. First, almost a third of European renewable energy developers are mentioning hydrogen on their websites, thereby showing the overall importance of the industry. However, only 56 firms mention hydrogen more than 10 times.
While there are some dedicated green hydrogen firms (Protium / Gen2 Energy), there are also some large-scale developers that are pursuing large scale green hydrogen projects, like Hive Energy and A-Enviro (AustriaEnergy). Also, major firms like Engie and ABO Wind are developing first projects.
