Global Hydrogen Flows – 2023 Update

November 16, 2023

Hydrogen and its derivatives will play a central role in decarbonization and global trade will be critical for driving uptake. This was the key finding of Global Hydrogen Flows, a joint report of the Hydrogen Council and McKinsey & Company published in 2022. It highlighted the inability of major future hydrogen demand regions, including Europe, Japan, and South Korea, to meet all their demand at affordable costs. Other regions, the report showed, could potentially have excess low-cost supply.

Yet the outlook for hydrogen is far from fixed. The hydrogen industry is constantly adapting to a rapidly evolving regulatory framework, shifts in global policy, geopolitical forces, new technologies, and ongoing learning from project implementation. This 2023 summary report revisits the findings of the 2022 Global Hydrogen Flows report to account for these and other changes—and assesses how global hydrogen trade flows could evolve.