Hydrogen is one of the world's largest industrial molecules, but most of the market is still invisible to end users because it is produced onsite or next door to refineries, ammonia plants, methanol plants and a smaller set of steel operations. IEA's 2025 review puts 2024 supply at almost 100 Mt, still almost entirely fossil-based and still overwhelmingly tied to long-established feedstock uses rather than to the clean-energy use cases that dominate public discussion.

Commercially, hydrogen is a split market. A minority moves through merchant pipelines, tube trailers or as liquid cryogenic hydrogen; the majority is captive production embedded in refinery and chemical complexes. Natural gas is the dominant feedstock, coal remains important in China, and by-product hydrogen from petrochemical processes still supplies roughly a sixth of the market. Electrolysis is growing quickly from a tiny base, but low-emissions hydrogen remained below 1% of global output in 2024.

The strategic story in 2025 is therefore not scarcity of hydrogen itself, but whether policy can turn a huge incumbent fossil hydrogen business into a low-emissions one. The U.S. 45V rules and the IMO shipping framework both improved the policy architecture for future demand and investment, but the IEA's assessment is that cost gaps, uncertain offtake and slow infrastructure buildout still dominate the commercial reality.