North American Hydrogen Production Report – January 2025

Introduction

Finding detailed and comprehensive hydrogen production information on the internet can be difficult.  Data must be aggregated from multiple sources and estimates must be calculated based on the best data and methodologies possible.  My name is Matt Wandel and I have been aggregating energy information data and hydrogen infrastructure data as a volunteer at respectmyplanet.org for over 15 years.  This report will provide a summary of all hydrogen production data RMP has aggregated whether its gray for oil refining, blue for ammonia, or green for transportation.  The methodologies for RMP’s calculations are based on many different sources, educated guesses, and standard accepted conversion ratios.  Since data procurement can get boring and technical, RMP’s sources and methods will be explained in an appendix at the end of this report for anyone interested.  There is no single source for this kind of information.  If you are interested in a comprehensive summary of North American hydrogen production by market segment for all colors, inputs, methods, types, and locations, you’ve found the right report.  RMP has this exclusive data.

Report Summary

Purpose of report

This report attempts to identify all hydrogen production locations in the USA and Canada both online & planned.  It is possible RMP has missed some locations, but RMP can demonstrate a very good & comprehensive look at 225 locations that represent 12.2 million tons of annual H2 production capacity online and an additional 2.5 million tons of planned capacity at various stages of planning or construction in North America.  In all, RMP has 14.7 million tons of annual hydrogen capacity in our North American database. These figures agree with generally accepted consensus production numbers, but have never been detailed by each individual production facility until now.  We intend to use this one relational database to homogenize, parse, sort & subtotal hydrogen production allowing us to find interesting insights that simply cannot be found anywhere else on the www.

Scope of report

This report covers the USA and Canada only.  RMP focuses on delineating hydrogen between three traditional market segments which make up 98.8% of production and two small emerging market segments which make up only 1.2% of total production.  RMP has classified each of the 225 hydrogen production locations in our GIS database into five distinct market segments.  The first three hydrogen production market segments we call Merchant H2, Oil Refining H2, and Ammonia H2 and they make up what RMP calls traditional hydrogen production.  RMP has classified two new emerging market segments we are calling Mobility H2 and P2G (Power To Grid) H2.  There are only 18 locations of the 225 total that are considered Mobility H2 production locations and they are a brand-new market completely unrelated to the traditional 100-year-old hydrogen market.  There are only nine P2G H2 production locations in RMP’s database and they are so new (& unrelated to traditional markets) we tag them as P2G_demo because they are all only in a demonstration phase.  Spoiler alert: all of RMP’s “pink” locations in North America fall into the P2G demonstration category.

Key Findings

When you assign data characteristics to 225 unique locations like tons of H2 produced per day, tons per year, market segment, region, color, and more, you can perform advanced queries and calculations in a database or excel spreadsheet.  Like fitting the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle into place, the big picture pops when you can finally see the continental overview.  RMP sees two major take away findings from this analysis that are not well reported in relation to hydrogen markets:  1)  There is zero gray hydrogen in the two emerging market segments Mobility H2 & P2G.  2) When you scale the GIS map markers’ size to hydrogen produced in tons per day, you see four brand new “blue” hydrogen plants that are monsters.  The big blue markers are represented in this post’s featured image.

In the last couple weeks of 2024 while working on this report, I have taken to naming these four locations the “blue monsters”.  Exxon’s planned “blue” facility Baytown Texas makes a giant blue dot on the map and will be the #1 largest hydrogen production location in North America, regardless of color, at 1 billion standard cubic feet per day.  In fact, of all 225 locations RMP has identified in the USA & Canada, these four new “blue” facilities will account for four of the top five largest production locations online or planned in North America.  All four of these new & planned “blue” facilities use ATR as a production method, not SMR.

Can I Just Skip To the Charts & Graphs?

Yes, RMP includes graphs at the end of each market segment section. Scroll right to them just to see the numbers.

North American Hydrogen Production Overview By The Numbers

Per the table below, RMP calculates approximate North American hydrogen production capacity as 14.7 million tons per year from both online and planned locations in January 2025.  See the appendix at the end of this report to understand more about the calculations & sources for RMP’s information.  General internet consensus is that USA currently produces between 10 & 11 million tons per year and Canada produces approximately 3 million tons per year.  Based on RMP’s figures, we come close to these nebulously reported consensus numbers, but we can now support them with detailed GIS data.  While it’s possible RMP is missing locations in Canada, it’s also possible the Canadian Government’s 3 million tons includes small scale H2 production and H2 as a waste byproduct.  RMP believes we have the major locations in our database from both countries but welcome peer review and constructive feedback.

RMP’s calculation of online & planned H2 production in USA & Canada as of January 2025.

As stated in the executive summary, 98.8% of hydrogen produced today is for established or traditional markets which RMP breaks down into three categories:  Merchant H2, Oil Refining H2, and Ammonia H2.  While merchant hydrogen (i.e. Air Products, Air Liquide, and Linde facilities) gets its own category, it is mostly purchased by oil refiners, ammonia makers and industrial chemical companies.  Therefore, Merchant H2 has significant overlap with oil refining & ammonia market segments.  Because hydrogen can be made anywhere, by anyone who wants to make it, and with an array of feedstocks, production is generally located on site for oil refineries and ammonia plants.

Not ironically, merchant hydrogen locations are generally situated very close to oil refineries or ammonia making locations as well.  It could be generally assumed that about 50% of the hydrogen made by merchants goes to oil refining, 35% goes toward making ammonia for fertilizer, and 15% goes to industrial chemical companies (although these figures can vary by instance).

The entire traditional H2 market segment has existed for decades and is separate from emerging hydrogen markets which are unrelated and virgin markets.  The traditional hydrogen market had been established for several decades before GM’s EV1 electric vehicle launched in 1996.  In fact, not much has changed in the traditional hydrogen market for decades save for capacity increases at current locations to match demand increases in refined fuels and food supply.

RMP makes this point about completely unrelated emerging hydrogen markets because many people conflate emerging hydrogen markets with traditional hydrogen markets.  By creating this comprehensive relational database of “all” hydrogen production locations, RMP can confidently make these statements of disambiguation and back them up with substantive data.

While it is clear to see traditional hydrogen markets use hydrogen made from fossil fuels, we can now isolate and calculate that of the 141,000 tons per year of hydrogen planned for the mobility market, 84% of that H2 production is from green sources and 16% of that hydrogen is from blue sources.  Literally zero percent of hydrogen production for 18 new mobility specific locations comes from gray hydrogen.  Only one plant for the mobility market that serves cars & trucks is online and it makes 30tpd of green hydrogen in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Air Liquide’s new North Las Vegas green H2 plant supplies the California FCEV market and makes enough green hydrogen for about 40,000 vehicles.  It is already clear to see that hydrogen for mobility scales with green hydrogen as there are approximately 15k FCEVs on California roads and enough dedicated green hydrogen to fuel about 40k.

Many articles and papers mention that most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels and intentionally mislead the reader to believe supporting zero emission hydrogen vehicles is equivalent to supporting fossil fuels and carbon intensive mobility.  This can now be proven false numerically with substantive data.  It is also clear by the numbers to see that green hydrogen for mobility scales with vehicle adoption for as many vehicles as the world needs.  Authors who present misleading extrapolations about hydrogen production for emerging markets should no longer ignore this compilation of data that proves the notion of gray hydrogen for mobility is false.

Below are some summary charts of overall hydrogen production in the USA & Canada based on RMP’s data. Click on any image to enlarge. Pie slices on the graphs are color coded per their generally accepted H2 color.

The next five sections of this report look at each of the five market segments RMP has defined with an explanation of each segment followed by visualized data in charts and graphs.  The first market segment we break down is hydrogen production specific to refining crude oil.

Hydrogen Production North America – Oil Refining

RMP estimates that hydrogen production for oil refining is currently the largest use for hydrogen but will soon be surpassed by ammonia because of blue hydrogen projects coming online in Baytown Texas and Darrow Mississippi that are absolutely enormous compared to traditional H2 production methods like SMR.  RMP estimates between 7 and 7.5 million tons per year of hydrogen are made in North America to refine crude oil into cleaner burning fuels.  RMP has 67 oil refineries in our hydrogen production database across the USA & Canada.  In a world where everyone is myopically focused on CO2, one might ask, why make all that CO2 by making hydrogen to refine crude oil.  If North America simply stopped making H2 for oil refining we could stop approximately 70 to 75 million tons of CO2 from going to atmosphere.  So why not just stop using fossil fuels to make hydrogen now?

Sulfur dioxide (SO₂) is much worse for our air than carbon dioxide CO₂, yet climate activists rarely talk about sulfur dioxide in their environmental justice crusades.  CO₂ is non-toxic and the same gas your body exhales with every breath you take.  CO₂ is both the natural byproduct of cellular respiration as well as the waste byproduct from burning fossil fuels.  Animal & plant life, along with fossil fuels, are very intertwined with the elements: hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

The hydrogen produced onsite at oil refineries and nearby at merchant hydrogen facilities is mostly used to remove sulfur from refined fuels to reduce sulfur oxides produced when gasoline or diesel fuel is burned.  Removing sulfur from refined fuels is crucial to minimize harmful emissions, as sulfur compounds contribute to air pollution by forming sulfur dioxide (SO₂), a precursor to acid rain and respiratory health problems. Additionally, low-sulfur fuels protect catalytic converters and other emission control technologies in vehicles, ensuring better environmental compliance and efficiency over a vehicle’s lifetime​.

It is ironic the EPA requires the production of hydrogen to help clean the air we breathe in a world of climate activists focused on CO₂ alone.  The environmental calculation, however, is simple:  releasing CO₂ from hydrogen production is better for environment on a continent that burns >600 million gallons of gasoline & diesel fuel each day.

100% of H2 made by oil refineries in North America is made from natural gas.  There is a small percentage of blue hydrogen made at merchant locations that gets sold to oil refineries but all H2 for oil refining is made from natural gas.  Again, this market segment has nothing to do with locations RMP considers hydrogen for emerging mobility markets.

The visualization of the data for hydrogen production related to oil refining makes the simplest of all the pie charts in this report, it’s 100% gray:

Fig. 6 – According to RMP’s analysis, all H2 production for oil refining is SMR from natural gas (also called gray hydrogen). RMP knows of no planned capacity increases for the oil refining market segment so this is the only graph for this market segment.

Hydrogen Production North America – Ammonia

RMP has 42 locations in our North American database dedicated to ammonia production. As mentioned previously, hydrogen can be made literally anywhere by anyone with any number of multiple feedstocks.  Therefore, hydrogen for ammonia production is also always made onsite and is primarily made with gray hydrogen.  In this unique market segment, there are two locations that make hydrogen for ammonia from a non-natural gas feedstock.   The Coffeyville Resources facility in Montgomery County Kansas gasifies pet coke into hydrogen and Dakota Gasification in Mercer County North Dakota gasifies lignite coal into hydrogen.  RMP considers both of these ammonia producing facilities as “brown” hydrogen.  They are the only two “brown” hydrogen locations in our North American database.

RMP estimates approximately 7 million tons annually of planned and online hydrogen production is related to ammonia production in North America (i.e. ammonia specific locations + a portion of merchant H2).  As mentioned in the executive summary, the surprising finding of this exercise for me, as someone who has studied hydrogen production for over a decade, is how quickly blue hydrogen production for ammonia is changing the landscape hydrogen production in North America.

RMP calculates that hydrogen production for ammonia has been 97% gray & 3% brown for the past several decades.  With these four “blue monsters” coming online in Edmonton Alberta, Baytown Texas, and Darrow Mississippi all dedicated to ammonia production, we will see those percentages quickly change to 64% gray, 34% blue, and 2% brown.  That statistic is literally amazing and demonstrates how new ATR technology, and the investments being made in new this new production capacity, can scale quickly.  Just four new plants will replace 34% of gray hydrogen production for ammonia and create domestic jobs in the next couple of years.  Because ATR allows hydrogen producers to capture near 100% of the CO2 from hydrogen production, this blue H2 will result in a reduction of approx. 2.5 million tons of CO2 per year.  In as little as a decade, the USA and Canada could eliminate nearly all CO2 from hydrogen production for traditional markets if environmental radicals opposing blue hydrogen do not block this immediate and impactful climate saving initiative.

Even with this incredible news of blue hydrogen removing millions of tons of anthropogenic CO2 from atmosphere, there are tens of thousands of vocal detractors that find a way to smear blue H2 with false and misleading information.  These are often the same folks that want to end fossil fuels now and they almost always link back to the flawed Jacobson & Howarth study that RMP wrote about immediately after it was published in November of 2021.

It sets up another example of the alternative of not making H2 for ammonia and ignoring the benefits of making it blue.  If the zealots could be successful in stopping fossil fuel use for ammonia production, greater than half the population would die of starvation.  I don’t even need to cite these statements to footnotes or sources as they’re so generally understood by most people.  If you’re reading this and don’t understand the correlation between hydrogen production for ammonia and the food supply, you have some learning to do.

So why would people fight blue H2 production that can remove millions of tons of CO2 from atmosphere so quickly and keep billions of people from dying a horrible death of starvation while we ramp up green hydrogen production?   No one will ever know.  The ignorance of a viewpoint so grave and closed minded is impossible to comprehend logically in the long-standing call to reduce GHG emissions.  The only conjecture I can make is that people who oppose blue hydrogen are ill informed and focus more on a hatred of oil & gas companies than they do on real climate solutions.  It is ironic that oil & gas companies, chemical companies, and merchant H2 producers are proposing climate solutions that reduce carbon emissions an order of magnitude more impactful and expeditious as compared to the climate activists’ objectives and climate activists are opposing them. 

Another question you might be asking:  It was mentioned in the executive summary that 4 of the 5 largest hydrogen production plants overall are these new “blue monsters” all using ATR to make H2.  Do you wonder what the other location in the top 5 largest producers overall is?   If you guessed the Central Farmers Fertilizer Company’s Donaldson Louisiana location, you’d be correct.  RMP estimates the CF Donaldson Nitrogen Complex makes about 1,900 tons of gray H2 per day using SMR.  If you look on RMP’s map of hydrogen infrastructure to find the CF Donaldson Nitrogen complex, you will see it is literally directly across the Mississippi River from where the Air Products Darrow Mississippi blue hydrogen plant will be built.  Air Products is investing approximately $4.5B to build this new ATR plant and it’s RMP’s guess this blue H2 made by Air Products will be sold to the CF Donaldson Nitrogen Complex directly across the river.

Let’s visualize the data for North American hydrogen production related to ammonia in some charts, tables, & graphs:

Fig. 7 – Most ammonia made in North America is gray with just over 3% coming from petroleum coke and coal which RMP classifies as “brown” hydrogen.
Fig. 8 -All of these graphs are percentage graphs, so they’re all to the scale of 100% only. So it’s important to look at the total tonnage which in this case is over 2M tons per year. This is a significant number that makes a dramatic dent in the next graph. Blue hydrogen is planned in the ammonia market segment more than any other.
Fig. 9 -This is the most remarkable of all the graphs in this report. With just a handful of plants (the “blue monsters”), ammonia production goes from ~97% gray to 64% gray. Blue hydrogen creates a ~34% dent in overall production. This shows an amazing potential for decarbonizing hydrogen production fast and effectively as blue hydrogen ramps fast. Green hydrogen ramps at good pace, as green H2 ramps, it can then replace blue.

Hydrogen Production North America – Merchant

RMP has 86 merchant H2 facility locations in our GIS database.  These locations are primarily the Big 3: Air Products (36 locations), Linde (25 locations), and Air Liquide (17 locations).  RMP considers Houston the energy capital of the world and the Gulf Coast of Texas & Louisiana as the busiest & most professionally developed region in terms of energy production & chemical feedstocks.  In this area, RMP has mapped over 1,600 miles of hydrogen pipelines that move hydrogen from New Orleans to Houston and down to Corpus Christi.   In this region there are handful of independent locations that make hydrogen outside of the big 3 in our database, but it’s primarily Air Products, Linde, and Air Liquide.   The big 3 are also the same companies that operate most of the hydrogen pipelines on the Gulf Coast.  There is so much going in the Gulf Coast area, RMP will have to post separately about the activity in this region to go into details.

Merchant H2 locations are very near oil refineries and ammonia plants.  Most of the H2 made at Merchant H2 locations is also used in oil refining & ammonia production but RMP classifies these locations independently as they not likely directly integrated producers.  Most Merchant H2 locations have made 100% gray hydrogen for the past several decades.  Green & blue hydrogen, however, are now making inroads into replacing gray hydrogen in the traditional hydrogen market segments.  RMP calculates (with planned facilities included) that green hydrogen will account for 0.1% of the Merchant H2 market and those big blues will make up 8% of the Merchant H2 segment.  That leaves about 92% of Merchant H2 as gray/SMR hydrogen.

Merchant H2 companies like Air Products, Linde, and Air Liquide have the experience to make hydrogen many numbers of ways.  They use SMR (traditional), ATR (new), PEM electrolysis (new), SMR from RNG (new), and even SOEC (new).  Just like a company has different business units, RMP considers facilities operated by these same companies as “Ammonia, “Mobility”, or “P2G” locations if they’re building purpose-built facilities to make hydrogen for a new/emerging market.  The Air Liquide North Las Vegas plant in RMP’s database is a great example.  Even though it is operated by Air Liquide, RMP considers this location a “Mobility” location because it is the first hydrogen production location specifically built to supply the new FCEV market in California.

Let’s visualize the data for merchant hydrogen production in some charts, tables, & graphs:

Fig. 10 – Most merchant hydrogen is made gray, but blue hydrogen is making inroads already to start changing the complexion of merchant hydrogen. Green hydrogen in this segment at nearly 3,000 tons per year is too small a slice to even register, but it has its foot in the door.
Fig. 11 – It is encouraging to see in this graph and all planned graphs there is no gray hydrogen planned. Literally all hydrogen planned is either blue, green, or pink which are carbon free versions of production. Most merchant hydrogen planned to come online is blue and most of that is being sold into the ammonia market segment. It’s why RMP thinks hydrogen for ammonia will overtake hydrogen for oil refining.

Hydrogen Production North America – Mobility

The mobility market for hydrogen production is brand new in the last five years.  The hydrogen mobility market segment is often conflated with the traditional hydrogen segments listed above.  Unlike traditional hydrogen production facilities for oil refineries & ammonia near large population centers, hydrogen production locations for mobility can be located anywhere and tend to be located away from population centers.  Green H2 production for mobility also varies in size from small (a couple tons per day) to large (Air Liquide Las Vegas @ 30tpd).

While oil refineries and ammonia plants are predominantly located near ports on the coast or on major rivers and use natural gas as a feedstock, hydrogen for mobility is shaping up to be located near low-cost renewable energy and near major freeways.  Because H2 can be made anywhere & by anyone, it always makes sense to make it where land is cheap, energy inputs/feedstocks are cheap, and market access is close by to reduce distribution costs. 

Sixteen of the eighteen hydrogen productions in RMP’s Mobility H2 market segment are green.  Of those sixteen, six will use anthropogenic RNG, four will use solar, three will use hydropower, two will use a mix of wind & solar together, and one will use wind exclusively.  This distribution shows the diversity and flexibility of green hydrogen production from renewable sources; again, green H2 production can be done anywhere with almost anything.  Whatever the best feedstock in your city, town, or rural community is, it can be used to make domestic hydrogen & create American jobs.

Hydrogen being produced by locations RMP labels as Mobility H2 are generally targeting offtakes for truck & bus refueling (HD), car & light truck refueling (LD), and forktruck refueling (LD).  The planned solar hydrogen production in California is demonstrating itself to be near large solar installations in California’s vast valleys & deserts.  These locations make sense because solar energy there is very cheap and many TWh’s of solar energy are being curtailed or wasted.  Because California’s grid operator CAISO must deny solar energy when there is no immediate demand, TWh’s of electricity cannot make it to market and end up wasted.  This wasted & dedicated solar energy will make green H2 near California freeways to help refuel Class 8 trucks which have hubs/anchor points at the Port of Los Angeles and now also the Port of Oakland.  Interstate 5 that runs between Los Angeles & San Francisco is seeing many planned hydrogen projects near Bakersfield and Fresno and all throughout California’s Central Valley.

It is smart of California to focus on the Central Valley for trucking because it is an easy and captive market to use all that wasted solar energy between the mountain ranges.  By making hydrogen for trucks in the Central Valley, it will drive down costs faster as economies of scale ramp up; a captive market and cheap solar energy are an excellent combo for green hydrogen to scale efficiently and economically for the mobility market segment.  RMP is watching California’s Central Valley, the Gulf Coast region of Texas & Louisiana, and Edmonton Alberta as the three major cradles of emerging low carbon hydrogen production market segments.

Let’s visualize the data for hydrogen production related to mobility with some charts & graphs:

Hydrogen Production North America – Power To Grid

The Power to Grid (P2G) hydrogen production market segment is the smallest, most diverse, and most nascent of all hydrogen production market segments. While there are dozens of proposed or conceptual projects written about in this segment, RMP lists only 9 locations in our database; none of which are gray.  P2G locations by tonnage produced are 95% green and 5% pink and this is the only category that currently has pink H2 production in RMP’s database.

I call this section the most diverse segment because of the varied nature of the active projects.  There are projects using solar to make hydrogen to add to natural gas pipelines.  There is a project using directed solar and multiple projects using solar PV.   There is a project using nuclear powered electricity and PEM electrolysis.  There is a project using nuclear powered electricity along with nuclear waste heat to make hydrogen at high efficiency using SOEC.  There are also so many conceptual projects written about that may never see the light of day.  RMP does not include many of these conceptual projects in our database until they get some substance behind them which is why we only have 9 in our database right now. Check out our map of all these production hydrogen locations along with H2 refueling locations, and fuel cell manufacturing locations by clicking here to see the GIS data supporting all these paragraphs.

I am reading the news & social media every day and constantly reviewing P2G projects to see if they merit getting added to RMP’s database. Even with funding and actual construction, a project might not make it past commissioning.  Without some kind of corroborating information like county records, news articles, press releases from credible companies, or something similar, RMP does not put those projects into our relational GIS database.  If you think RMP is missing a legit hydrogen production location on our map of any kind, please let us know by emailing us at respectmyplanet@gmail.com with as much information possible so we can check it out and add it.

In my opinion, the two most interesting projects of the nine involve a company called Bloom Energy.  Bloom Energy is an early mover in SOEC (Solid Oxide Electrolysis Cell) technology.  Many companies around the world are investing in this promising way to make hydrogen from water very efficiently using sources of waste heat. It’s estimated that with the same electrical input, SOEC can make 40-50% more hydrogen than PEM electrolysis.  Nuclear energy produces waste heat and the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant in Goodhue County Minnesota is an interesting demonstration project using Bloom SOEC technology.

While this project is small in scale, it demonstrates a large opportunity for Bloom to pair its SOEC with waste heat to make cheap & efficient hydrogen.  Waste heat is generated by many processes like steel making, cement production, glass manufacturing, chemical production, oil refining, and power generation just to name a few.  Because hydrogen can be made anywhere by anyone using almost any feedstock, it is easy to imagine companies like Bloom and others pursuing SOEC to target customers that could make literally tons of green hydrogen cheap near waste heat sources.  Companies like Bloom & Topsoe could grow their top line sales substantially as these demonstration projects turn over into full scale adoption and FIDs (Final Investment Decisions) as this emerging market matures.

North American Hydrogen Production Summary

It’s been a long journey of using limited spare hours to identify locations and collect information from so many data sources.  Identifying & quilting locations across our continent and assigning them market segments, colors, production methods, et Al. is a slow process for one person working full time hours and only working on this project with volunteer after hours.  But, RMP is finally now at a point where you can step back look at these new emerging markets independently with clarity because of this tedious work.  We can remove the noise of bad or misleading information that fills the vacuum of ignorance.  RMP has advocated for hydrogen’s positive role in our economy for over 15 years with our online presence.  RMP supports hydrogen as an important part of a sustainable economy because of the environmental benefits in terms of protecting air & water as well as providing domestic job growth.  Now this data can further substantiate many of the things RMP has published over the past 15 years.

Hydrogen can be made from water, from farm waste, food waste, as a byproduct, from landfill trash, even it can even be made from human sewage.  Currently hydrogen made specifically for mobility is nearly 100% green but so many articles about hydrogen for mobility or energy storage conflate green H2 made for mobility with gray hydrogen made for oil refining.  I have personally read 100s of articles and seen 1000s of social media posts that insist hydrogen for cars & trucks comes from and will continue to come from gray hydrogen.  Yet, the data shows that claim is false & misleading.  Of the 18 projects online or in development to make hydrogen for mobility, there is not even one that is using gray hydrogen.   The whole objective of spending much of my free time to compile this data is to disambiguate and prove those claims as true or false based on substantive data.  In that regard, it is rewarding to reach a milestone in identifying all these hydrogen production locations across North America to make this substantive analysis.

Another take-away of this work is seeing what RMP is calling the “blue monsters”.   We know that without hydrogen for ammonia production over half the world would die a horrible death of starvation.  The biggest traditional gray hydrogen production location is the CF Donaldson plant in Louisiana; it’s been the biggest for decades.  We have accepted as a society that these millions of tons of CO2 for making H2 are ok because without this H2 for fertilizer, people would literally die.  Now we see four new planned “blue monsters” that will become the 4 largest production locations in North America irrespective of color or method.  All four will bump the CF Donaldson from the #1 largest H2 producer in North America to the #5 producer in terms of size.  Four literal monster plants that will sequester nearly 100% of the CO2 associated with a new production process called ATR (Auto Thermal Reformation).

ATR gives producers economic advantages over the traditional process of SMR in terms of removing carbon dioxide.  All four of these multi-billion dollar investments will use ATR to remove the CO2 and it is safe to assume ATR can scale quickly to replace SMR as demonstrated in this report. This knowledge is gleaned from the work put in to building the database.  These four plants alone developed in as little as five years from conception to completion and will reduce the CO2 produced to make hydrogen from Ammonia by approximately 34%, and overall in North America by over 8%.  This will save approximately 25 million tons of CO2 from going to atmosphere.  That statistic should really smack you as an amazing reduction if you concern yourself with CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

You would think people would celebrate, right? You’d be wrong. Confusion—whether intentional or not—between SMR and ATR continues to muddy the waters. Then there’s the debunked Jacobson & Howarth report, which, despite being thoroughly discredited in 2021, persists as the go-to citation for anti-blue hydrogen arguments in 2025. The report was published two month’s after Air Products announced a $4.5B investment in Mississippi to produce blue hydrogen. The false claim that blue hydrogen emits more greenhouse gases than coal has turned into a over used soundbite, repeated so often it drowns out facts. Nearly every anti-blue hydrogen article or comment traces back to this single flawed report, designed to stoke fear and doubt. It’s a textbook case of “creating FUD,” and unfortunately, it works all too well in modern America.

For decades activists have clamored for CO2 reduction.  Companies hear them, invest billions of dollars in removing CO2 from their processes, and the activists move the goal posts and manufacture new claims unhinged from the measurable benefits.  Those who claim to be interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions & GHG emission in general, cannot be taken seriously if they do not seek to have carbon abatement from fossil fuels as part of a comprehensive energy plan. Fossil fuels provide >80% of the world’s energy. That percentage has not changed in 20 years and will very hopefully drop further in the next 20 years, but will likely remain >75% in the next 20 years. This is because electricity is simple to decarbonize while primary energy is much more difficult to decarbonize. Primary energy is where hydrogen shines.  There are millions of workers in the oil & gas industry in North America and millions more jobs connected indirectly.  RMP would rather see us develop new American jobs for those same skilled workers while we transition from carbon intensive energy production to carbon neutral and carbon negative energy production.

We must ramp down fossil fuel use but we must also abate the carbon emissions now.  Carbon abatement does not need to slow our ramp up of green hydrogen & other sustainable fuels.  We can do both while simultaneously keeping American employment high.  This is the way to make serious carbon dioxide & GHG reductions now while we work on making all energy green, sustainable, and carbon free.  Too many people always one want thing to the exclusion of every other.  Why not all things now? Many solutions must become the one solution.  E pluribus unum, right?

With no centralized relational database to disambiguate claims conflating traditional hydrogen production with new market segments like mobility, it has been difficult for people to determine if information they’re reading about hydrogen is accurate or inaccurate.  Many articles smearing hydrogen’s clean & sustainable potential have been hard to prove wrong because there is no source to reference substantive data.  This “vacuum” of information gives negative influencers the opportunity to publish bogus smears that are difficult to defend against. It is much more difficult to disprove a lie with substantive data than it is sell a lie as true in the absence of data.  When the information does not exist to support or rebuff a claim, speculators extrapolate misleading conclusions.  And worse, millions of people believe the bogus claims.

RMP has put in the work to build and vet this relational database that allows us for the first time to put numbers behind the claims made in our articles.  This data also gives RMP the power to defend against misleading information intended to smear hydrogen’s potential as anything other than clean & sustainable.  RMP does all of this to stay true to our founding mission:  protecting fresh water resources in Michigan and around the world.

While this database is a start, this process is never over; it’s a life-long journey for this organization.  It is really only me putting in the work to look up and research these locations and write the software to put them on a map.  RMP has zero revenue.  RMP is a grass roots 501c3 non-profit organization registered in Michigan that operates on a shoestring budget. RMP’s mission is to protect our fresh water resources.  RMP will continue to add locations, vet the data we have, and make corrections to data as we find them.  RMP looks forward to building on this data and publishing more articles on all the interesting projects going on in the USA and Canada.

Please Consider Helping Our Non-Profit Reach More People

If you made it this far, thank you for reading.  Because RMP is a registered 501c3, any donation made to our organization is tax deductible for you.  We have had less than $100/year revenue as a 501c3 in our over 10-year incorporation and over 15 years of public service.  Our expenses have averaged over $250/year in the same time frame for webhosting, bank fees, and Michigan incorporation fees. If you think our work is worthy, consider making a tax-deductible donation to our grass roots organization to help us keep the lights on and reach more people with this information.  I am already over $3,000 in debt over these past 10 years to personally finance this organization with my full-time day job (which is completely unrelated to this organization).  I would like to thank you in advance for any financial support that would allow RMP to grow our social media presence & continue this research into sustainable energy production & waste management to protect our fresh water resources.  Thanks!

APPENDIX – DATA SOURCES & CALCULATIONS

This appendix outlines the methodology and data sources used by RMP to estimate hydrogen production at various locations. The process incorporates data from multiple reputable sources and applies conversion factors to standardize the figures into consistent units for reporting.


Data Sources
  1. United States Oil Refinery Hydrogen Production
    GIS data on hydrogen production from U.S. oil refineries was sourced from the EIA-820 Refinery Capacity Report provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) (source).
  2. Hydrogen Production Quantities
    Additional hydrogen production data was retrieved from the U.S. Department of Energy’s H2Tools website (source).
  3. U.S. Carbon Emissions Data
    For hydrogen production not explicitly reported in the above sources, RMP utilized data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (source).
  4. Canadian Data Sources
    Hydrogen production data for Canada was compiled from refinery information and ammonia production statistics. Specific data points, such as those for the Irving Refinery in New Brunswick, were cross-referenced using public oil production reports. GIS data for ammonia production was sourced from a report by Natural Resources Canada (source).

Conversion Methodology
Standardizing Units

Hydrogen production capacities are often reported in different units depending on the source:

  • Traditional markets: Millions of Standard Cubic Feet per Day (MMSCFD)
  • Emerging markets: Tons per Day (tpd)

To ensure consistency, RMP converted all MMSCFD figures to tpd and subsequently to tons per year (tpy) using the following steps:


Gas Volume and Mole Conversion

One mole of ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure (0°C and 1 atm) occupies 22.4 liters.

One cubic meter of volume equals 35.3137 cubic feet.

The conversion factor from liters to cubic feet is:
$$ \frac{22.4}{1000 \times 35.3137} = 0.79104928 $$


Mass of Hydrogen per Cubic Foot

The mass of hydrogen per mole is 0.002016 kg.

Thus, the conversion factor for hydrogen from cubic feet to kilograms is:
$$ \frac{0.002016}{0.79104928} = 0.002548514 \, \text{kg/ft}^3 $$


Converting MMSCFD to Tons per Day

To calculate hydrogen production in tons per day, the formula is:
$$ \text{Hydrogen tpd} = \text{MMSCFD} \times 1,000,000 \times 0.002548514 $$

Example: A facility with a production capacity of 100 MMSCFD:
$$ 100 \times 1,000,000 \times 0.002548514 = 254.851 \, \text{tpd} $$


U.S. Hydrogen Production Based on Carbon Emissions

For facilities where hydrogen production data is unavailable, RMP used EPA-reported CO₂ emissions to estimate hydrogen output. The assumption is based on the stoichiometric relationship that producing 1 ton of hydrogen results in 9 tons of CO₂. Adjustments for plant downtime were included, assuming 90% operational efficiency:
$$ \text{Hydrogen tpd} = \frac{\text{CO₂ tpy}}{9 \times 365} \times 0.9 $$

Example: If a plant reports 100,000 tpy of CO₂ emissions, hydrogen production is estimated as:
$$ \frac{100,000}{9 \times 365} \times 0.9 = 27 \, \text{tpd} $$


Canadian Hydrogen Production

Hydrogen production for Canadian refineries was estimated based on the Irving Refinery in New Brunswick, which produces 200 tpd of hydrogen while refining 300,000 barrels of oil per day (BPD). The ratio of hydrogen production to oil throughput (0.66667 tpd per 1,000 BPD) was applied to other Canadian refineries using their respective throughput data.

For ammonia production in Canada, data from Natural Resources Canada was converted to hydrogen production using the following formula:
$$ \text{Hydrogen tpd} = \frac{\text{Ammonia tpy}}{365} \times 0.177 $$


This methodology combines data from authoritative sources with scientifically derived conversion factors to estimate hydrogen production across various locations. While Canadian data required additional assumptions due to limited direct reporting, these calculations provide a reasonable approximation to support hydrogen production analysis.


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2 responses to “North American Hydrogen Production Report – January 2025”

  1. Hamza Siddiqui Avatar
    Hamza Siddiqui

    Matt,

    Thank you for your detailed worked. Very interesting and much appreciated. What are your thoughts on Plug Power? They are now building out their own hydrogen producing facilities and have developed end to end solutions for their customers. What are your thoughts on their impact on hydrogen and their future?

    1. Matt Wandel Avatar
      Matt Wandel

      Hi Hamza, thank you for reading. RMP is only tracking Plug Power to the extent they are building H2 capacity (production, PEM cell manufacturing, and refueling capacity) in North America. I’m aware that Plug is also active on other continents, but I’m not as familiar with those projects. I will answer in broad terms and use solar, batteries, and China in an analogy for Plug. The USA dominated solar in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. When Ronald Reagan came to office, he famously dismissed the US pursuit of solar. Germany was also a leader in solar at the time. The anti-solar crowd was strong and both countries dismissed solar as too expensive. China saw the problem was with raw materials and the supply chain. China focused on making polysilicon and now dominates solar because of polysilicon production. Economies of scale have brought solar costs down because of silicon’s abundance; eventually fixed costs get paid off and you print money at high volume. The same type of anti-solar rhetoric from the 1980’s is stalling US progress on hydrogen in 2025. Policy makers lack the guts to support fixed costs now even though they know money can be printed indefinitely once they’re paid off. The same thing has happened with batteries in 2008. US could have competed in batteries if we started in earnest in 2008 when the race winner was not yet determined. Instead we deferred our research to China and China did the same thing: they focused on battery raw materials and now utterly dominate the lithium-ion battery supply chain because they control the ore, smelting, and metal refinement markets. Even if you assemble a battery in the USA, it’s a Chinese battery in terms of the upstream & midstream supply chain.
      I consider “new energy” as these three pillars: (1) solar [polysilicon], (2) batteries [lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, graphite, phosphorus, copper], and hydrogen [literally everywhere]. China utterly dominates the first two pillars and now has embarked in earnest on dominating the third and final pillar: hydrogen. China makes a five-year plan each half decade and we see they are now focused on hydrogen & fuel cells in their 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) given they safely dominate the other two pillars until at least 2040-2050. China’s 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) will be published soon and we will then see how aggressively China further pursues hydrogen. Consensus is China will not just maintain their global leadership in hydrogen production (33M tpy) in their next five-year plan, they will demonstrate utter dominance in hydrogen to send a signal the world they own “new energy”.
      USA and China are currently on equal footing in this 3rd and final pillar of “new energy” here in 2025. Plug’s chances will depend on the USA making a strategic decision to support making energy domestically. If the US government helps support the important and strategic initiative of making energy domestically (and the equipment that will make energy domestically) it would give Plug a fair chance to scale up green hydrogen and they could be an enormous player in this massive market. We know just like solar, the raw materials [silicon dioxide / sand] are abundant, you just have to have the guts to scale a complicated process of turning abundant sand into polysilicon and you can dominate industry regardless of where the panels are made.
      The same thing is true with hydrogen, the raw material feedstocks are abundant. If the USA does not support any of the “new energy” paradigms like hydrogen, Plug will fail. It’s the same with the USA supporting polysilicon makers and mining for the other two pillars. If common sense prevails and the US government crafts thoughtful policy that will give Plug a fair chance to scale, Plug could be an amazing wealth generator. If the USA treats hydrogen like we did solar in the 1980’s or batteries in 2008 and just gives the keys to the castle to China, Plug could fail.
      We know economies of scale bring down costs when supply is super abundant and easy like hydrogen. If Plug is helped through the strategic objective of just getting a fair chance to compete, they could thrive provided they’re managed properly in terms of operations and finance. So in the end, my answer is the USA must make the strategic decision that we don’t want to be dependent on China for 100% of our “new energy”. We can see China is now aggressively focused on scaling hydrogen knowing they dominate solar & batteries. If the USA doesn’t support hydrogen strategically to give Plug (New York) a level playing field they will all struggle to survive. That is similar with other American companies too like Cummins/Accelera (Indiana), Nuvera (Massachusetts), Bloom (California), Fuel Cell Energy (Connecticut), General Motors (Michigan), Proton Onsite/Nel (Connecticut), and Air Products (Pennsylvania). If US policy can be written fairly to give American companies like Plug and others a chance to compete without simply picking winners & losers, Plug has a great chance. But, if the USA doesn’t support a strategic objective of not depending on China for 100% of our hydrogen equipment and therefore 100% of all three pillars of “new energy”, then Plug will not survive or will be acquired by a larger energy company and shelved until policy is changed. Plug has a fighting chance to be a big energy player if the USA supports domestic energy strategically.
      I don’t have a crystal ball, but Plug has a chance to grow large if they’re managed effectively and policy is written fairly for the “new energy” industry at large. Vague answer, but that’s my response. Thanks for reading. RMP will be blogging more about the US supply chains of polysilicon, battery metals, and hydrogen production. Please subscribe if you’re interested in North American energy infrastructure. RMP also posts about environmental remediation of fresh water.

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