H2Global built a hydrogen market with one intermediary buying long, selling short

Green hydrogen in 2022 had a chicken-and-egg problem: producers would not build plants without long-term buyers, and industrial buyers would not sign 10-year contracts for a fuel they had never used. Germany's answer, funded by the BMWK and co-created by Timo Bollerhey, was the H2Global Foundation and its trading arm Hintco GmbH.

Hintco runs two auctions back to back. On the supply side it buys hydrogen products from the lowest bidder on long-term hydrogen purchase agreements, giving producers a bankable revenue stream to finance against. On the demand side it resells the product in short-term sales auctions that match what buyers are actually willing to commit to. The spread between the long-term purchase price and the short-term sale price is covered by a fixed public budget — the subsidy buys the difference, not the molecule.

The EUR 900 million pilot auction, launched in late 2022, drew bids from 22 companies and consortia on five continents. In July 2024 Fertiglobe, the ADNOC–OCI fertilizer partnership, won the renewable ammonia lot with a contract worth up to EUR 397 million to deliver up to 397,000 tons cumulatively by 2033, starting from a plant in Ain Sokhna, Egypt fed by Egypt Green Hydrogen. The average bid price came in below the cap H2Global had set, proving the market was more competitive than expected.

One state-backed intermediary straddles both sides of a missing market

Long-term purchase contracts make producers bankable, which unlocks private project finance no subsidy alone could.

Short-term resale contracts let real buyers test the fuel without a decade-long commitment, so demand can form.

Public money covers only the spread between buy and sell prices, making each euro of subsidy leverage a whole trade.

Auctions on both sides reveal true prices instead of an administrator guessing a tariff.

When a market fails because each side waits for the other, a public intermediary that buys long and sells short can stand in for both; subsidy then pays only the spread, not the price.

The eSAF lot ended with no award and its funds were folded into the methanol lot, showing the mechanism can redirect money to where the market actually is. Australia, Canada and the EU have since announced joint H2Global-style auctions, and the model has become the reference design for buying clean-fuel supply that does not yet exist.