By Christoph Steitz and Tom Käckenhoff
FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) -Thyssenkrupp Nucera expects law it is relying on to subsidise green hydrogen to be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election, making it hard to predict how projects in the nascent industry will evolve, its CEO said on Tuesday.
Following the Ukraine war and Germany’s shift away from Russian gas, the country has focused on developing green hydrogen as an alternative energy source.
But the industry has been banking on tax credits from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and his administration has yet to back up the outline law with detail.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera CEO Werner Ponikwar said the chance was “very low” that the legislation would be released before the November election.
“And again I think this is one of those uncertainties that makes it for us very difficult to predict also how projects will move ahead in next year,” he told analysts after presenting final third-quarter results.
The impact has the potential to be huge in that the U.S. hydrogen generation market was estimated at $18.3 billion in 2023 and to grow to $31.4 billion by 2033, according to Precedence Research.
Thyssenkrupp Nucera, in which Thyssenkrupp holds a majority stake, last month scrapped its outlook for the alkaline water electrolysis business division, saying ongoing uncertainty made a forecast impossible for now.
Still, equipment orders stood at 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) at the end of June, up from 1.2 billion at the end of March, the company said on Tuesday.
Shares, which have more than halved since Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s listing last year, were up 1.8% at 0835 GMT.
Ponikwar downplayed the risk that parts of the IRA could be repealed in the event Donald Trump, who has voiced scepticism over some clean technologies, is re-elected.
“I think that actually everyone also in the U.S. understands that we need to change here when it comes to the way how we produce and use energy,” Ponikwar said. “I would not believe that someone will actually wipe that off the table now.”
($1 = 0.9141 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Rachel More and Barbara Lewis)
