JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The hydrogen economy is set to be a broad demand sector with strong growth, despite some short-term challenges, as global policy becomes more supportive, South Africa’s Valterra Platinum stated in its 2025 annual reporting suite published on Friday, March 27, when it pointed out that the platinum group metals (PGMs) that it mines and markets are an essential catalyst in both the production and use of hydrogen.

While the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Valterra’s reporting suite was doing the rounds, Fuel Cells Works was highlighting that China's 1 150 km hydrogen trucking corridor has made nearly 7 000 runs and is also now crossing into Vietnam – an advance that elicited this comment from India’s green hydrogen energy transition leader Sudipta Kr Dutta: “This is a significant shift from demonstration to operation.”

This follows Northam Platinum CEO Paul Dunne, who is also president of Minerals Council South Africa, saying this at the PGMs Industry Day in Johannesburg: “Our belief in hydrogen comes about from a number of revelations that we've seen on our travels in China”, which is where the Northam team witnessed the mobility of thousands of commercialised hydrogen Toyota fuel cell trucks, each making use of 100 g of platinum per cell.

This is how the trucks gain electrical mobility. Air flows through the grills at the front of the trucks to the fuel cell stacks, the hydrogen and the oxygen in the air react to generate electricity to propel the trucks and the only emission is water.

Little wonder that Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Dr Richard Stewart says he’s bullish on hydrogen and Implats CEO Nico Muller says he thinks hydrogen’s got the inside track.

Not a day passes without a new announcement on platinum-based electrification through hydrogen of the green variety and also of the grey variety, the latter generated in large quantities by South Africa’s Sasol since 1950.

As Valterra was reporting last Friday, Renewables Now outlined how German companies Yamko Energy and Ilos are developing a 100 MW green hydrogen plant in Mantasia, Greece.

Following recent trips to Korea, India and Japan, the Hydrogen Council, on which Sasol CEO Simon Baloyi and Valterra CEO Craig Miller are board members, joined the China International Hydrogen Congress and Expo in Beijing to discuss how key markets in Asia are using hydrogen to navigate current energy challenges and simultaneously build a cleaner, more secure and resilient future.

China has played a key role in operationalising $110-billion across 510 hydrogen projects entering construction or in operation globally.

Hydrogen Industry VN reports that Hyundai’s hydrogen-electric Xcient fuel cell truck is to be deployed in a timber transport logistics project in Uruguay.

On emerging from Smart Energy Week 2026 in Tokyo, Hydrogen Council CEO Ivana Jemelkova said: “I left Japan with a simple conclusion: the crisis in the Middle East and related global energy shocks must serve as a wake-up call: we urgently need to think and build differently for a clean, secure and resilient energy future.”

Hydrogen Fuel News reports that China’s targeting of €3/kg hydrogen is expected to quicken the advance towards the large-scale implementation of hydrogen fuel cell electric busing, trucking and heavy equipment powering. The publication reports that the price reduction is fitting into China’s Five-Year Plan to 2030 at the same time as the National Energy Administration is implementing policies to build hydrogen infrastructure extending to refuelling.

Meanwhile, 58 bids have been placed in its third European Hydrogen Bank auction, totalling €8.4-billion in requested funding, compared with a €1.3-billion budget and German electrolysis company Thyssenkrupp Nucera has received an order from Spanish energy company Moeve to supply electrolysers with a capacity of 300 MW for a hydrogen plant in Andalusia, Spain. When operational, Moeve’s plant is expected to produce about 45 000 t of green hydrogen per year, saving about 250 000 t of CO₂ a year.

Toyota has announced that it will begin mass-producing 5 MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers in the 2029 fiscal year. PEM electrolysers use PGMs to produce green hydrogen.

India's first hydrogen train last month completed a trial run in Haryana's Jind, covering a 20-km stretch between Jind and Lalit Khera at a speed of 70 km/h. With eight coaches, the hydrogen train reached a top speed of 70 km/h on the railway track over a distance of 20 km.

Germany’s lower house has passed the Hydrogen Acceleration Act, formally designating hydrogen infrastructure as being of “overriding public interest” in a move aimed squarely at cutting red tape and accelerating project approvals across the sector.

Approved by the Deutscher Bundestag in February, the law streamlines and digitalises permitting procedures for hydrogen production, import, storage and transport — and locks in this special status until 2045.

By granting hydrogen schemes legal priority in approval processes, Berlin is signalling that clean hydrogen infrastructure is a strategic industrial asset. The law also extends to derivative conversion facilities, meaning import terminals handling e-fuels, liquid organic hydrogen carriers and related products are eligible for accelerated treatment. The new Act does not solve the economics overnight, but it does remove a major procedural bottleneck, the World Platinum Investment Council stated on LinkedIn.

US hydrogen player Plug Power achieved a positive gross margin for the final quarter of 2025 and the company has also entered into definitive agreement with Stream Data Centers, a hyperscale data centre developer and operator. Plug also announced it had completed the first hydrogen fill of Hynetwork’s 32 km hydrogen pipeline in Rotterdam supplying 32 t of renewable green hydrogen and the delivery of a custom unloading infrastructure required for this first pipeline-purging and filling operations.

In February, Plug completed the installation of 100 MW of green hydrogen electrolyser units at Galp’s Sines Refinery in Portugal. Last month a 220 MW green hydrogen project was completed in Utah and in California, Houston-based Utility Global has secured $100-million for a biogas-to-hydrogen mobility project.

Gas Networks Ireland said in February that it would explore the potential for producing green hydrogen at a gas terminal in County Mayo under a pilot project with Irish and Canadian partners.

Norway company Nel ASA reported in February that its PEM division was continuing to show promising signs with improved financials and substantial uptick in order intake. Order intake for the quarter was NOK 686-million, and at the end of the quarter the order backlog stood at NOK 1 319-million, up 34% from the third quarter of 2025. The company reported a healthy cash balance of about NOK 1.6-billion.

German steel maker Salzgitter secured additional financing of $379.18-million from the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony to support its green steel project.

Green hydrogen technologies – from electrolysers to fuel cells, hydrogen storage and safety – rely heavily on PGMs, directly linking the hydrogen economy to South Africa’s mining sector.

"The low-carbon transition is an opportunity to drive the development of cleaner technologies, create new industries and employment, and continue to improve people’s lives,” Valterra reported last Friday.

“Hydrogen has a significant and systemic role in reaching a low-carbon future and is a key driver in deploying renewables-based power generation systems. PGMs are an essential catalyst in both the production and use of hydrogen.

“Platinum and iridium-containing PEM electrolysers can produce clean hydrogen from renewable energy. Platinum-containing fuel cells already have a role in stationary power generation and can be used efficiently to power both light and heavy-duty fuel-cell electric vehicles,” Valterra added.

Through the supply of PGMs essential to cleaner technologies, including hydrogen energy and emissions reduction solutions, South Africa’s PGM mining and marketing companies continue to advance the global transition to a lower-carbon, more inclusive economy.

Key uses of PGMs are in pollution control as catalytic converters in internal combustion engines, hybrid vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles.

In the industrial sector, PGMs perform in the chemical business as process catalysts, in hard discs, multilayer ceramic capacitors, and semiconductors, and in glass and fiberglass and in smaller sectors in medical assistance, pollution control, electrochemical, and oil reforming roles.

The opportunities for PGMs are in the hydrogen economy, sustainable aviation, e-fuels, carbon-neutral feedstocks, AI and cloud computing and price-led PGM innovation.

Valterra Platinum and TotalEnergies South Africa have entered into a long-term strategic partnership, and a multi-year research-and-development partnership has been concluded with Johnson Matthey and Sibanye-Stillwater to accelerate the next generation of PGM-enabled technologies.

The collaboration, expected to expand with additional partners in the coming months, will explore uses across multiple sectors including clean hydrogen, enhanced emissions detection and reduction across stationary and mobile sources, new electronic materials, and high-performance alloys and other advanced materials.