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.

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 month, 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.

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.

Meanwhile, US hydrogen player Plug Power achieved a positive gross margin for the final quarter of 2025 and the company has also entered into a 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 operation.

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’s 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.