Green hydrogen.
Beat the clock.

January 1, 2028 is the most important date in green hydrogen. A U.S. project has to start construction before then to qualify for the hydrogen production tax credit, worth up to $3 a kilogram, and the International Energy Agency says more than 100 GW of announced projects worldwide need an investment decision by the end of 2027 to be running by 2030. The whole industry is racing the same clock.

Air Products has already stepped off the track. In June, it walked away from its Louisiana hydrogen complex and its green hydrogen plant in Arizona, took a charge of up to $2.9 billion, and said the projects didn't meet its return targets. It had warned for months that it wouldn't build Louisiana without firm buyers for the output.

That's the industry's problem in one company. Green hydrogen is hydrogen made by splitting water with renewable electricity, in a machine called an electrolyzer. Nothing is burned, so no carbon comes out. It can replace the gas-made hydrogen that refineries and fertilizer plants already use, and it can make steel without coal. The chemistry has never been the catch. The price is. Green hydrogen costs several times more than the gas-made kind, and very few buyers will pay the difference unless a subsidy or a law makes them.

So the money hasn't shown up. U.S. developers announced $63 billion of hydrogen projects and had actually invested about $5 billion as of early this year. Most pure-play green hydrogen stocks have gone nowhere in 2026. The one thing booming is Chinese electrolyzer exports.

When the clock runs out, the only projects left standing will be the ones with someone paying for the hydrogen. So this list of green hydrogen stocks starts where the demand is real: Europe's mandates, a single giant export plant in Saudi Arabia, cheap Chinese equipment, two companies that learned to live without a boom, and two private names testing the whole idea.

Europe is the one place where the law is starting to force demand. EU rules call for 42% of the hydrogen used in industry to be renewable by 2030, and its Hydrogen Bank auctions pay producers a premium per kilogram. These three sell electrolyzers into that market.

ITM Power LSE: ITM

ITM Power has something no other electrolyzer maker on this list has: its government as a partner. In April, Great British Energy, the state-owned clean energy company, bought about 10% of ITM for £40 million. The energy department added a £46.5 million grant for a gigawatt-a-year production line in Sheffield.

That matters because the UK is trying to build a domestic hydrogen industry on purpose, and ITM is the national champion. The stock is up nearly 60% this year. Revenue guidance for the year to April was £40–43 million, and it expected to end that year with more than £200 million of cash, so it isn't racing a funding clock while it waits for the subsidy one.

thyssenkrupp nucera ETR: NCH2

thyssenkrupp nucera supplied the electrolyzers for NEOM, the giant green hydrogen plant going up in Saudi Arabia. That job is mostly done, and hydrogen sales fell to €80 million in the first nine months of the fiscal year, from €377 million a year earlier.

What keeps it standing is a dull, profitable business making equipment for chlorine plants, which earned €38 million over the same nine months. That, plus €627 million of net cash, buys nucera time to wait for the next big hydrogen order. Orders over the nine months nearly doubled. It also scrapped plans to mass-produce a newer electrolyzer technology, which is the right kind of discipline for a market this thin.

Nel ASA OSE: NEL

Nel ASA is the Norwegian veteran of the space. It launched a new pressurized alkaline electrolyzer in May, designed to cut the cost of a whole hydrogen plant, not just the stack. That's the only way a Western maker competes with Chinese equipment that costs a fraction as much.

Orders tripled last quarter, though from a very low base. Nel has about NOK 1.3 billion of cash, and its CEO resigned in June and is staying through a six-month notice period while the board looks for a replacement. This is a turnaround with a new product and no permanent leader, and the new electrolyzer has to win orders to make it work.

Saudi Arabia is building green hydrogen for export, at a scale nobody else has tried. These two green hydrogen stocks are the way in.

Air Products NYSE: APD

Air Products has been backing out of green hydrogen for two years. It exited three U.S. projects in early 2025, then Louisiana and Arizona this June, with billions in charges each time.

What's left is its one-third stake in NEOM, a 2-gigawatt-plus plant in Saudi Arabia that will turn green hydrogen into ammonia for shipping overseas. Air Products is supposed to take the output, and in July it finalized a deal with Yara, the fertilizer giant, to sell whatever ammonia Air Products doesn't use itself. First ammonia is expected in 2027. That makes Air Products a large industrial gas company with one very big green hydrogen bet attached.

ACWA Power Tadawul: 2082

ACWA Power is the Saudi developer that owns another third of NEOM, and it holds exclusive rights to export green hydrogen from the kingdom.

That's the cleanest way to own the Saudi version of this industry, where the sun is strong, land is plentiful, and the state wants it built. ACWA's real business is building power and water plants across the Middle East and beyond. Green hydrogen is the option on top.

The electrolyzer itself is turning into a commodity, and China is setting the price.

Sungrow Power SZSE: 300274

Sungrow Power is one of the world's biggest makers of solar inverters, and it also builds alkaline electrolyzers. In March it shipped 160 MW of them to ACME's green ammonia project in Oman.

That's the trade Western makers fear most. Chinese companies already sell the solar panels and the inverters for a hydrogen project, and now they're shipping the electrolyzers too, at prices Europe and the U.S. can't match. Sungrow is the most investable way to own that, inside a company whose main business doesn't depend on hydrogen at all.

Two companies that have worked out how to live without a hydrogen boom.

Ceres Power LSE: CWR

Ceres Power doesn't build factories. It designs solid oxide cells, which can either make hydrogen from steam or turn fuel into electricity, and licenses the designs to partners like Doosan, Delta and Denso.

That's a much better place to be than an electrolyzer maker with a factory to fill. Shell's demonstration electrolyzer using Ceres technology in India beat performance expectations this year. Meanwhile the fuel-cell side is chasing a market that's actually growing: on-site power for data centers. Ceres raised £102.6 million in June and has £172 million of cash.

Plug Power NASDAQ: PLUG

Plug Power is the biggest name in American hydrogen, and for years it lost money on almost everything it sold. That finally changed. Gross margin reached roughly breakeven last quarter, from minus 31% a year earlier, and operating costs were cut in half.

It's still a turnaround on thin ice. The Energy Department ended Plug's loan guarantee in August, and the company has more than 1.39 billion shares outstanding plus programs in place to sell many more. Management is targeting positive adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter. If it gets there, Plug is the U.S. hydrogen company that survived the bust. If it doesn't, those extra shares get sold.

Stegra (Private)

Stegra is building a green steel mill in northern Sweden, powered by one of Europe's largest electrolyzer plants. It's the purest test of green hydrogen's whole pitch: a real industrial buyer making a real product that customers have signed up to pay more for.

It nearly ran out of money. In April a consortium led by Wallenberg Investments agreed to a €1.4 billion rescue, and the project timeline is under review. If Stegra ships green steel, every hydrogen developer in Europe gets a reference customer. If it doesn't, the industry loses its best story.

John Cockerill (Private)

John Cockerill is a Belgian industrial group that has become one of the few Western electrolyzer makers still winning big. It bought most of bankrupt French rival McPhy's assets last year and landed a 1.3 GW electrolyzer order from AM Green for a green ammonia project in Kakinada, India. India has cheap solar, fertilizer demand at home, and government backing. That combination may matter more than any Western subsidy.

The best year for hydrogen orders in a while is probably coming, for the wrong reason.

As the U.S. credit deadline and the IEA's investment window close at the end of 2027, developers will rush to start construction on anything that might pencil out. Electrolyzer order books could look healthier in 2027 than they have since the hype peak. A lot of that will be developers locking in a subsidy before the door shuts, not buyers locking in hydrogen.

Then comes 2028, when projects have to stand on their own. The projects that survive, and the green hydrogen stocks behind them, will be the ones with a customer: a European refinery under a mandate, a Saudi or Indian ammonia plant with an offtake contract, a steel mill that pre-sold its output. When the orders spike next year, read them by who is buying the hydrogen, not who is buying the electrolyzer.