The dream of green steel in the desert came to an abrupt end. Masdar has officially terminated the bidding for hundred megawatt level green hydrogen projects, revealing the reality of global green hydrogen commercialization facing a cooling off. Faced with weak demand and high costs, capital is quietly shifting towards the AI computing power track, and the direction of energy transformation is being recalibrated.

The 100 MW project came to a sudden halt

Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company Masdar has abandoned its original 100 MW green hydrogen project construction plan. Affected by the insufficient global demand for green hydrogen and high costs, the investment layout of new energy in the United Arab Emirates is undergoing adjustments. The project is located in the Musafa Industrial Zone of Abu Dhabi and plans to construct a 100 MW electrolytic cell to produce green hydrogen for local steel company Emsteel to produce green steel. After the start of the preliminary work of the project, the FEED design contract was won by the NT Energies consortium formed by Abu Dhabi and French companies.

After the contractor completed the bidding, Masdar extended the validity period of the quotation and officially informed all bidders of the cancellation of the project. The participating companies in this bidding include Far East Energy, China Power Construction, China Petrochemical, as well as Larsen&Toubro from India and Samsung E&A from South Korea. This decision means that the green hydrogen project, which was originally open to global capital, has pressed the termination button before it hits the door.

From Green Hydrogen to Computing Power

The termination of the project has exposed the dual challenges of cost and demand in the commercialization of green hydrogen. Masdar had previously set a development goal of producing one million tons of green hydrogen annually after 2030, but this goal has been announced to be postponed. Affected by the sluggish demand and high production costs in the global green hydrogen market, the company plans to allocate the funds and power resources originally invested in green hydrogen to the fields of artificial intelligence and data centers.

Among them, the desert solar energy project will reallocate large-scale photovoltaic installations to provide power support for AI data centers. The capital migration of billions of dollars marks a rewriting of the underlying logic of new energy investment - when green fuels find it difficult to find buyers, supplying energy to the digital world becomes a more certain business.

Pilot factories continue to operate

Although the large-scale green hydrogen project has been cancelled, the small-scale demonstration projects of Masdar and Emsteel are still ongoing. Both parties have launched a green hydrogen pilot plant with a 2.1 MW electrolytic cell, which can produce up to thousands of tons of green steel annually. This micro project proves that technology validation and industrial exploration have not stopped, but the pace of industrialization has been forcibly slowed down. Keywords: green hydrogen, high cost, investment shift, AI computing power

The cancellation of the 100MW project represents a slowdown in the pace of green hydrogen industrialization expansion in the United Arab Emirates. It also reflects the difficult balance between green fuels and digital infrastructure for energy companies. As computing power becomes the oil of the new era, the narrative of energy transition is being rewritten.Editor/Gong Ziwei