Green at the point of use, exposed inside the stack
Hydrogen gets discussed as an energy carrier, an industrial feedstock and a climate solution. All of those are true. Physically, the hydrogen transition is also a materials challenge. Electrolysers, fuel cells, storage, compressors and balance-of-plant equipment all have to be built before hydrogen can play the role assigned to it.
That is where the circular problem starts. The hydrogen economy is being scaled to cut dependence on fossil fuels, yet some of the equipment needed to produce and use green hydrogen depends on scarce and concentrated materials of its own. In PEM electrolysers and fuel cells that means platinum group metals such as iridium and platinum. Elsewhere it means nickel, membranes, coatings and complex assemblies that need long lifetimes and credible recovery routes.
So the circular question is not whether hydrogen is clean where it is used. The question is whether the equipment that makes and uses hydrogen can scale without creating a fresh critical-material bottleneck. Hydrogen circularity is not an end-of-life waste topic. It is a design and lifetime question, and a material-security one, from the start.
The supply chain
Hydrogen value loop
Outer ring: hydrogen hardware value chain. Purple: virgin critical materials in. Inner arcs: loops that keep value upstream through repair, refurbishment, remanufacture and PGM recovery. Red: material lost when stacks are disposed before recovery routes exist.
R-ladder · value kept in the loop
- R0–R2Smarter use & design cuts virgin inflowRefuse, rethink, reduce
- R3–R7Extend lifespanReuse, repair, refurbish, repurpose
- R8RecycleMechanical & chemical recycling
- R9Recover energyEnergy recovery
Reserved channels · never used on the ladder
- virginVirgin inputVirgin iridium, platinum and other critical raw materials
- cascadeCascadeStack degradation in operation
- leakageLeakageLandfill, incineration & emissions
- chainThe chainPrimary value chain path
The problem from where you sit
CEO, CFO or project developer
Stack lifetime and material exposure are now cost-of-capital questions.
Stack lifetime, maintenance and replacement cycles feed straight into the levelised cost of hydrogen, so circular design is a cost-of-capital and risk question rather than green spend. The readiness gap decides whether a project is quietly building a future materials liability or a recoverable asset. Durability, serviceability and recovery routes are what keep the investment case standing as material prices move.
Procurement, technology and sustainability managers
What you write into the specification today decides what is recoverable in a decade.
Material intensity and recoverability are decided at design, in catalyst loading and in how serviceable the system is, often years before anyone tries to recover anything. The leverage sits in the specification: material documentation, recovery rights and refurbishability written in upfront. Buyers who demand that become less exposed when supply tightens.
Engineering, operations and service teams
You see the degradation and the failure patterns. That data is the input to the circular case.
You see how stacks degrade and fail in practice, and that is the data that decides whether lifetime extension, refurbishment and recovery are feasible at all. It is only worth something if it reaches design and procurement early, while the next generation of stacks can still change.
Treating hydrogen as clean by definition
The common failure is to assume green hydrogen is automatically circular because it is made with renewable electricity. That is too easy. Green hydrogen can still depend on scarce materials, still use equipment that is hard to repair, and still be specified in ways that make refurbishment impossible and recovery uneconomic. The better question is whether the hydrogen system is circular enough to scale.
The pressure with a target: electrolyser scale-up
The Netherlands treats hydrogen as a strategic part of industrial decarbonisation, energy storage and port growth. The Dutch hydrogen strategy sets electrolyser capacity targets for 2025 and 2030, rising from 500 MW to 4 GW. Those are not only energy targets. They imply a physical build-out of hardware, supply chains, installation capacity, grid connections, water systems and end-of-life routes. Every megawatt pulls materials into the system, and the technology mix is not neutral. PEM electrolysers are attractive because they respond quickly to renewable power, and they are the most iridium- and platinum-intensive option.
2025
Dutch hydrogen strategy
Dutch interim target: 500 MW electrolyser capacity
In force2030
Dutch hydrogen strategy
Dutch target: 4 GW electrolyser capacity
Upcoming2030+
EU policy
EU scale-up under REPowerEU and Hydrogen Bank funding rounds
Upcoming2050
Research scenarios
Net-zero deployment scenarios point to PGM demand approaching or exceeding current annual production
Upcoming
The capacity targets are a hardware build-out, not only an energy plan. They turn stack lifetime, material loading and recovery routes into the variables that decide whether the targets are deliverable, financeable and resilient.
The pressure without a date: iridium
Iridium makes the problem visible. It is scarce, produced mostly as a by-product of platinum mining, and hard to scale on its own. Global production runs at only a few tonnes a year. TNO has warned that iridium and platinum scarcity could constrain green hydrogen scale-up. A 2025 study estimated annual iridium production at around 7.5 tonnes and found that meeting net-zero deployment scenarios would require major improvements in catalyst efficiency and access to a substantial share of global iridium production.
The exact figures move with scenario, technology mix and catalyst assumptions. The direction does not. If scale-up leans on technologies that use scarce materials, circular design stops being optional and becomes part of the feasibility case.
Scale-up meets scarce metal
Demand for stacks is being pulled forward by capacity targets while iridium supply, catalyst efficiency and recovery routes all sit on much slower curves. The two do not meet, and the cost sits in the gap.
Hardware demand rising fast
Capacity targets
EU and national targets pull electrolyser deployment forward against a fixed clock.
PEM bias
PEM is the technology of choice for flexible operation with renewables, and it is the most iridium- and platinum-intensive option.
Materials and recovery cannot keep up
Iridium is scarce
A by-product metal with around 7.5 tonnes of annual global production cannot be scaled on demand.
Stacks are short-lived
Lifetime, serviceability and refurbishability are still uneven across technologies and vendors.
Recovery routes immature
PGM recovery from electrolysers and fuel cells is in pilot, not at industrial scale, so value leaves the system at replacement.
Circular design becomes feasibility
Lower material loading, longer-lived stacks, refurbishability and credible PGM recovery are what close the gap between scale-up ambition and material reality.
Hardware demand is pulled forward by capacity targets while iridium supply, catalyst efficiency and recovery routes sit on slower curves. The cost sits in the gap. A system that cannot recover its iridium is weakening its own growth path.
Material spotlight
Iridium — where it comes from
Share of global mine production · by-product of platinum (PGM)
Iridium is one of the scarcest metals on Earth and one of the most concentrated. Roughly 85% of global supply comes from South African platinum mines, with Zimbabwe and Russia making up most of the rest. There is no standalone iridium mine — supply moves only when platinum moves.
The bigger lever is the system around the stack
Recovering critical materials inside the stack keeps value in the system. Designing the system around the stack is what turns scale-up ambition into delivered, financeable capacity.
Circular Intelligence comes at this from the CIRCO electrolyser and offshore wind tracks Alexander Forrest designed at BlueCity Rotterdam, and the fuel cell Blue Paper he worked on there. Across all of it, the recurring struggle was not the technology. It was getting producers, network operators, end users and regulators to actually work together, instead of each being sold a generic clean-molecule story that solved none of their individual problems. Hydrogen moves when each of those layers sees its own problem solved inside one integral system.
Reuse the asset base before building new. Groningen gas extraction stopped on 1 October 2023, leaving a national asset base of pipelines, compression and salt-cavern storage built for one purpose and now available for another. Gasunie, through its subsidiary Hynetwork, is converting it: the national backbone is planned at around 1,200 kilometres, most of it repurposed gas pipe. This is the R-ladder applied at infrastructure scale. The highest-value circular outcome is keeping the asset in use as a hydrogen carrier, not recovering its steel decades later. Circularity in hydrogen starts before the stack, in what you reuse to move the molecule.
Route the new pipe to demand that is already stuck. The first 32 kilometres of the national network, from Maasvlakte to Pernis, are laid, and the backbone extends from there. The standing risk is the chicken-and-egg problem the Dutch Court of Audit flagged: infrastructure needs committed demand, and demand needs infrastructure in the ground. The way to break it is on the ground, literally. Across the Netherlands, businesses are blocked by grid congestion and cannot get the power connection they need to grow. For a grid-constrained site, a hydrogen connection is not a sustainability upgrade. It is the only route to operate and expand at all. Route the new pipeline deliberately past those sites and stranded demand becomes anchor demand. That is what productising the dream for a single layer looks like: the constrained industrial site does not want green molecules, it wants to keep running and grow, and hydrogen is the thing that lets it.
Treat the molecule as energy security, not only as climate spend. A combustible fuel produced here from wind and water removes exposure to imported fuel and the price shocks that travel with global trade. After the gas-supply shock, made here and burned here is a sovereignty argument before it is a climate one. We lead with that because it speaks to the people who release capital. A CFO and a regional authority respond to resilience and security of supply, and on those terms hydrogen reads as an asset rather than a cost.
Move policy with industry, not behind it. Shipping is the clearest case where industry cannot close the gap alone. Fossil marine fuel stays artificially cheap, partly because bunker fuel sits outside normal fuel taxation, so the market prices diesel below hydrogen-derived fuels such as e-ammonia and e-methanol even where the climate case is clear. FuelEU Maritime now pulls demand for renewable fuels and rewards early use of renewable hydrogen-based fuels through to the end of 2033, and the EU Emissions Trading System puts a price on maritime emissions. The fossil side still lags, because the Energy Taxation Directive has not yet aligned the tax treatment of bunker fuel with the climate rules. Until it does, a locally produced hydrogen fuel competes against a subsidised incumbent. Align the carbon price and the demand mandate with the fuel-tax treatment on the fossil side, and the local molecule becomes competitive. Leave any one of them out of step and the dream stalls again. This is the part that needs government to think outside its own box, not just industry.
The thread under all four moves is the same one that runs through this page. Recovering iridium inside the stack keeps value in the system. Designing the system around it, so that reused assets, routed infrastructure, anchored demand and aligned policy reinforce each other, is the harder problem and the bigger prize, and it is the one we keep coming back to.
How the hydrogen build-out looks from each market
The circularity figure beneath each heading is the economy-wide indicator (Eurostat circular material use rate, or the Circularity Gap Report's global figure), shown as context rather than a hydrogen-specific recycling rate.
European Union
12.2% circular material use, Eurostat 2024
The EU is funding hydrogen scale-up while flagging that the same technologies depend on critical materials it does not control.
- REPowerEU: 10 Mt domestic renewable hydrogen production target by 2030, with 10 Mt imports alongside
- European Hydrogen Bank: auction-based support for renewable hydrogen production
- Critical Raw Materials Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1252): iridium and platinum among the materials whose supply the EU aims to diversify, with recycling and substitution targets
- European Hydrogen Observatory: hydrogen technologies flagged as reliant on PGMs concentrated in a small number of producer countries
International
6.9% global circularity, Circularity Gap Report 2026
Outside the EU, hydrogen strategies are racing on capacity while the PGM supply and recovery question is largely unaddressed in policy.
- PGM mining concentrated in South Africa, Russia and Zimbabwe
- United States: Inflation Reduction Act hydrogen production tax credit (45V) drives deployment with little attached circularity requirement
- China: scaling alkaline and PEM electrolyser manufacturing capacity, with growing share of global stack supply
- Recovery infrastructure for PGMs from electrolysers and fuel cells exists at pilot scale, not yet industrial
Netherlands
32.7% circular material use, Eurostat 2024
The Netherlands has the EU's highest circular material use rate, with hydrogen at the centre of its industrial transition, so the binding question is whether the build-out is designed for materials and lifetime from the start.
- Dutch hydrogen strategy: 500 MW electrolyser capacity by 2025, 4 GW by 2030
- Hydrogen backbone: ~1,200 km national network being built out by Gasunie / Hynetwork, mostly repurposed gas pipe; first 32 km Maasvlakte–Pernis laid
- Port-led demand clusters in Rotterdam, North Sea Canal Area, Groningen and Zeeland
- TNO active on lowering iridium loading via techniques such as Atomic Layer Deposition
- BlueCity electrolyser tracks and fuel cell Blue Paper work brought stack manufacturers, developers and recyclers into shared design conversations
- Dutch Court of Audit flagged chicken-and-egg risk: infrastructure needs committed demand, demand needs infrastructure in the ground
- Grid congestion is blocking growth at industrial sites: hydrogen connections can route stranded demand into anchor demand
Ireland
2.0% circular material use, Eurostat 2024
Ireland has one of the EU's lowest circular material use rates and a hydrogen ambition tied to offshore wind, which means circularity is being defined now while the project pipeline is still being shaped.
- National Hydrogen Strategy (2023): hydrogen positioned as a route to integrate large-scale offshore wind, with both domestic use and potential export
- Hydrogen demand clusters expected around dispatchable power, heavy transport and heat for industry
- Limited domestic PGM recovery and stack refurbishment infrastructure today
- Early-stage project pipeline gives space to write circular criteria into procurement before lock-in
Where does this leave you?
Five statements about how ready your hydrogen activity is for the material and lifetime pressure the scale-up creates. Count the ones you can honestly say yes to. The gaps are where the cost and the exposure sit.
- 1. We know our exposure to iridium, platinum and other critical-material loading in the stacks we make, buy or operate.
- 2. We can state the expected lifetime, degradation profile and replacement schedule of our stacks.
- 3. Our equipment is specified to be serviced, refurbished or remanufactured rather than replaced whole.
- 4. We hold recovery rights and material passports for the PGMs and components in our systems.
- 5. We have weighed technology fit, across PEM, alkaline and solid oxide, against operating profile and material exposure, not only capex.
Answer all five statements to see your readout.
Circular levers
Design for durability
Longer stack life reduces replacement demand, lowers lifetime cost and delays the need for new critical materials.
Design for serviceability
Stacks and balance-of-plant components need to be inspected, repaired and replaced without treating the whole system as disposable.
Material efficiency
Reducing iridium and platinum loading is one of the most direct ways to lower critical-material exposure. TNO, for example, is working on techniques such as Atomic Layer Deposition to reduce iridium use in electrolysers.
Stack refurbishment and remanufacturing
A used stack is not automatically waste. If components can be assessed, cleaned, recoated, replaced or remanufactured, part of the value stays in the system.
Critical material recovery
Platinum group metals need credible recovery routes from electrolysers and fuel cells, not only from existing industrial catalyst streams. Research and pilot work is increasingly focused on bringing critical raw materials from electrolysers back into the cycle.
Technology-fit decisions
Not every hydrogen application needs the same electrolyser technology. Matching technology to operating profile, material exposure and lifetime requirements is a circular decision as much as an engineering one.
Asset passports and material documentation
If operators do not know what materials are inside their stacks, where they are, how they have degraded and who has recovery rights, the circular value is already leaking before end-of-life arrives.
These are not sustainability extras. They determine whether hydrogen projects become cheaper, more resilient and more financeable over time, or whether they become dependent on fragile supply chains and expensive replacement cycles.