[ industry rankings ]
based on small numbers of deployments or capabilities.
Followers Followers are companies not expected to challenge the Leaders unless they can substantially alter their strategic vision and expand their resources. Their long-term viability is in doubt unless systemic changes are made within the organization. No vendors are ranked as Followers in this Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard.
What is becoming explicitly evident is that the pipeline of hydrogen production projects in advanced stages of commercial development, firm purchase orders, and data related to financial performance are all highly likely to become matters of scrutiny given the current headwinds faced in the sector.
Adapting to industrial change
The overall rankings for the Hydrogen Electrolyzer Leaderboard are presented in Chart 2. The Guidehouse Leaderboard provides a snapshot ranking of electrolyzer manufacturers based on their cumulative strengths across both market strategy and commercial execution. A holistic view of an OEM’ s strengths and weaknesses is arguably more informative than a focus on certain performance metrics that, as electrolyzer technologies continue to develop, may show reduced levels of differentiation. the industry into eight quantifiable metrics that generally speak to a hydrogen electrolyzer provider’ s market strategy, and market execution: qualitative strategy as well as quantitative execution.
The Leaderboard was informed heavily by stakeholder interviews, supplemented with project development trends as captured in Guidehouse Insights’ Hydrogen Electrolyzer Tracker across project deployments, purchase orders, reservation or framework agreements, as well global manufacturing capacity. Guidehouse Insights made the conscious decision to focus on projects either operational or in advanced stages of commercial development because of the burgeoning volume of projects in early phases of development( i. e., planned, announced), a good volume of which would likely have come to commercial fruition.
In all cases, vendors were encouraged to verify database entries. These more straightforward metrics in the execution category assess the competitive performance of a company’ s electrolyzer technology. The electrolyzer vendor’ s installed electrolyzer capacity( for projects in operation and advanced commercial development), and the volume of capacity in firm purchase orders, reservation agreements, or framework agreements, combined with global manufacturing footprint, are all tracked. This was combined with stakeholder interviews and all relevant secondary information made public by vendors.
Moreover, in a period of time for the industry where the emphasis will likely now lie on project execution rather than mere announcements, real-world project execution should be emphasised in any company ranking or benchmarking service. Still, a company’ s strategy will inevitably be mutually imbricated with its success in commercial execution, which underscores again the need for a holistic assessment. That is why the Hydrogen Electrolyzer Leaderboard has sought to distill insights from
In retrospect, commercial execution is unsurprisingly one of the higher-weighted metrics in the study. Nevertheless, the Leaderboard does incorporate metrics related to a company’ s strategy, the depth and breadth of its partnerships, geographical reach, technology, and product performance-related information, as well as financial stability and staying power. A range of different metrics is important to give a holistic overview of a company’ s relative positioning on the
38 Hydrogen Tech World | Issue 21 | April 2025