Plug Power wants to work with Trump administration to redraw new hydrogen tax credit regulations

US electrolyser maker CEO Andy Marsh suggests that the final 45V rules unveiled on Friday do not align with congressional intent and do not 'ensure national energy security'

Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power, speaking at the Global Green Hydrogen Assembly in Barcelona in May.
Andy Marsh, CEO of Plug Power, speaking at the Global Green Hydrogen Assembly in Barcelona in May.Photo: GH2

The new hydrogen tax credit regulations unveiled on Friday should be redrawn by the incoming Trump administration, suggests Andy Marsh, the long-standing CEO of US green hydrogen company Plug Power.

The debt-ridden manufacturer of PEM electrolysers and fuel cells, which also develops green hydrogen projects, raised eyebrows last summer when it announced that it would recognise the 45V clean hydrogen production tax credit of up to $3/kg in its financial reports for its plant in Woodbine, Georgia, even though the rules for claiming the credit hadn’t yet been finalised.
Marsh told Hydrogen Insight in October that “we’re already getting tax credits”, because the project meets the three pillars rules of additionality, time matching and geographic correlation in the draft proposals published in December 2023.

He also told this publication that “ultimately, the US will get [the regulations] right”.

In a message posted on social media late on Friday — but not on Plug’s own website — Marsh wrote that the final regulations “mark significant progress… and lay a stronger foundation for US manufacturing in the hydrogen economy”.

However, he added: “While these updates are encouraging, we look forward to collaborating with the new administration to refine the regulations in a way that aligns with congressional intent, supports their goal of reducing overregulation, and ensures national energy security.”

The “congressional intent” line refers to comments made by disgruntled politicians, such as the soon-to-be-retired senator Joe Manchin, that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (which included the tax credits) did not intend for there to be strict rules on how renewable H2 would be defined.

The incoming Trump administration — led by a president who says that climate change is a hoax — wants to scrap environmental-protection regulations that increase costs for polluting companies, while also increasing US production of planet-harming fossil fuels.

Trump also stated on the campaign trail that he wanted to remove all unspent funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, while the Republican-leaning Supreme Court made a ruling last summer that makes it easier for courts to overturn government agency regulations.

Marsh’s damning-by-faint-praise of the Biden administration comes a little over six months since the Department of Energy awarded Plug a $1.66bn loan guarantee — ostensibly to build six new green hydrogen projects — which one analyst told Hydrogen Insight had kept the company afloat after it recorded a $1.4bn loss in 2023.

Marsh would undoubtedly reject such a claim, telling the market last year that “operationally, we are not dependent upon the DOE loan for 2024”.

In its latest financial results, Plug acknowledged that it had accumulated debts of $5.26bn, and that it had shrunk its quarterly losses to $211m in Q3 2024 (down from $296m in Q1 and $262m in Q2).
A senior executive at Plug Power told Hydrogen Insight last summer that the three pillars added about $2/kg to the cost of producing green H2.
In its response to the public consultation on the draft 45V regulations unveiled in December 2023, Plug wrote: “The burdens imposed by this trio of restrictions will drastically stunt the growth of the clean hydrogen industry and prevent many promising projects from ever getting off the ground.”

The New York-state-based company had also called for projects built before the end of 2026 to be eligible for the tax credit even if they draw on existing clean power from the grid, as well as specific carve-outs for the use of existing clean baseload power such as nuclear and hydro.

The final regulations did allow nuclear-derived electrolytic hydrogen to qualify for the tax credits, but only for projects using power from nuclear plants that were at risk of retirement.

Click here for more details about the final regulations.
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Published 7 January 2025, 08:29Updated 7 January 2025, 08:29
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