Another setback for hydrogen advocates in the Port of Antwerp-Bruges: The American company Plug Power is permanently scrapping its plans to build a hydrogen plant on the former Opel site in the Port of Antwerp.

Last week it was reported that Fluxys is having difficulty finding customers for its hydrogen pipeline network. Due to this new setback, it is looking increasingly likely that the Port of Antwerp-Bruges will have to position itself explicitly as merely an import and transit hub for renewable molecules in Europe, rather than also as a producer of green hydrogen – something energy experts had warned about in the past.

Projected investment of up to €400 million

The CHYMIA project, representing an investment of 350 to 400 million euros, was announced in June 2022 during an economic mission to New York – CHYMIA stands for Cluster HYdrogen for Mobility and Industry in Antwerp.

At that time, Plug Power signed a 30-year concession agreement with the Port of Antwerp-Bruges to build a 100 MW green hydrogen plant capable of producing 35 metric tons of green hydrogen per day, or up to 12,500 metric tons per year.

The plant, the country’s largest hydrogen production facility, would be built in the NextGen District – the former Opel site that is being transformed into a European hub for sustainable business – and would be powered by electricity from nearby wind turbines.

And the project was quite ambitious: CHYMIA was set to be a European first because it relied on hydrogen liquefaction technology. Liquid hydrogen has a much higher density than gaseous hydrogen, which allows for smaller storage volumes and larger reserves.

According to Plug Power, that liquefaction technology did not yet exist on the market on that scale.

Huge financial difficulties

But according to the business newspaper De Tijd, which reviewed the recently filed annual financial statements of the Belgian subsidiary, Plug Power is now pulling the plug on the project.

It is being scrapped due to the financial difficulties Plug Power has been facing for years. The company is in a persistent cash crisis (it just sold 2 hydrogen projects in the U.S. for more than 275 million dollars in liquidity), and its accumulated losses had already reached 7,38 billion dollars by early 2026.

That is why the company is restructuring its portfolio and is forced to focus on projects that yield a return more quickly – the reason it wrote off the project in Antwerp. According to Plug Power, another factor to consider is the future profitability and the evolution of the hydrogen market: These are too uncertain and unclear.

ACER, the EU energy regulator, for example, calculated in its latest hydrogen-market assessment that renewable hydrogen in Europe costs around €8/kg on average, roughly four times the cost of conventional fossil-based hydrogen. High electricity prices are also a factor in this – electricity alone can represent up to 50% of the production cost.

Continues to invest in hydrogen

Still, Plug Power isn’t pulling out of hydrogen or Europe, as strange as it may sound. Plug’s own hydrogen-production business isn’t profitable yet. Its hydrogen fuel gross margin improved enormously in Q2, but was still minus 48%, versus minus 91% a year earlier.

So, it is simply reallocating some of its capital to areas where the fundamental economic conditions are more favorable – for example, due to lower electricity costs. Only nine days ago, it specifically highlighted several European projects progressing: Galp, Portugal (100 MW); Iberdrola/BP, Spain (25 MW); and Carlton Power, UK (30 MW initially, eventually 55 MW).

Because the sun shines more intensely and more often in Spain and Portugal, a solar panel generates more electricity per year there than in Northwestern Europe.

For the UK, other factors come into play: access to offshore wind (low-cost, high volume), specific UK subsidy programs for hydrogen, and industrial clusters, such as those around Manchester, that serve as anchor customers.

Another factor to consider: the Portuguese energy company Galp is paying for the installation as part of its own decarbonization investment. That is part of a 650-million-euro investment program in low-carbon fuel.

It will consume the hydrogen immediately itself, on-site, for an actual operational process. Consequently, there is no market risk for Plug Power, unlike in Antwerp, where Plug itself would have to invest hundreds of millions, produce the hydrogen, and then find enough customers at a sufficiently high price.

Focus on import-transit hub for Port of Antwerp-Bruges

For the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, the withdrawal of the investment is a serious setback, but it also confirms a pattern that was already emerging.

That the import-transit-hub strategy is becoming even more central than before, as production ambitions are falling by the wayside one by one due to the difficult economic situation facing the green hydrogen sector worldwide.

According to the port authority, the option of a project with smaller production volumes has not yet been completely ruled out, partly because there is still that 30-year concession – the future of the concession is currently part of the dialogue with Plug.

At the same time, however, there is also a strong sense of realism. “For Belgium, large-scale local production of green hydrogen is economically and technically challenging, partly due to the limited availability of renewable electricity,” says the port authority.

“That is why importing hydrogen and hydrogen carriers remains a logical option, precisely because the market remains very cautious and investors need certain conditions.” And that’s a striking contrast to the almost blind faith in hydrogen – even among politicians – a few years ago.