Air Liquide is expecting more final investment decisions (FID) to be pushed back to the second half of this year as customers wait on policy and economic clarity.
Speaking on an earnings call today following the release of full year results, Adam Peters, CEO North America, said, “When I talk to our customers, development continues to be very high and many remain bullish about what’s going to happen but until we have clarity from the administration around priorities, we’re going to see more investment decisions in the second half of the year.”
Later in the call he anticipated FID for the ExxonMobil Baytown project will take place in the second half of 2025.
Read more: Air Liquide to invest $850m to boost ExxonMobil’s Texas hydrogen project
Emilie Mouren-Renouard, Group Vice-President, said Europe has ‘active project development’ and highlighted new contracts with La Mède and for two large scale electrolysers with TotalEnergies in the Netherlands.
Read more: Air Liquide to build 80m hydrogen plant at TotalEnergies La Mède facility
Read more: Air Liquide and TotalEnergies invest €1bn in Dutch green hydrogen
“However several projects to FID are taking longer than expected,” she said. “With regulatory uncertainty, some customers are looking for clarification or other incentives. Overall I would say the momentum is still here.”
CEO Francois Jackow said one of the key learnings of the past few months is only the “most solid, good projects” will survive.
“And I think that’s good. Many people thought hydrogen would be everywhere and would be the silver bullet to solve all the topics of the energy transition. That has not been the reality,” he said. “In the past couple of years, there has been a lot of unrealistic hope, maybe even hype, on hydrogen. We welcome a much more realistic time, which confirms our strategy where low-carbon hydrogen plays a key role in decarbonising selected industries.”
Earlier in the week he reaffirmed that hydrogen ‘is key’ to decarbonising industry and heavy mobility.
He said while Europe continues to be slow, with ongoing restructuring, China is showing upward trends, driven by strong momentum in electronics.
“We have to face the fact that part of the industry in Europe will disappear, but we see new opportunities. Overall we must remain cautious and agile,” he said.
