Thierry Lepercq built utility-scale solar before it was cheap. Now he says hydrogen is where solar was a decade and a half ago, and solar developers should pay attention.
On 22 September 2026, Solarplaza CEO Edwin Koot caught up with Thierry Lepercq, a familiar face at Solarplaza events for two decades. Lepercq led solar developer Solairedirect as president from 2006 to 2016, then served as an executive vice president at Engie for technology and innovation from 2016 to 2018. He also wrote ‘Hydrogen is the New Oil’. Since then, he has gone all in on green hydrogen: he founded Soladvent, which aims to make green hydrogen competitive with fossil fuels, launched the HyDeal Ambition platform of 30 European energy players targeting green hydrogen at €1.5/kg before 2030, and co-founded DH2 Energy. He also chairs HyDeal España, the joint venture between ArcelorMittal, Grupo Fertiberia, Enagás and DH2 Energy.
Their conversation covered why the hydrogen market is stuck, what it can learn from solar's rough patch in 2012, and what solar developers should do about it. Lepercq speaks candidly, so expect some strong opinions.
Key takeaways
- Green hydrogen is at its own "2012 moment": the mandate-and-subsidy model is running out of road, and cost competitiveness will decide what comes next.
- Trust between buyers, developers, and lenders is the real bottleneck. Higher interest rates and very high EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) prices are making it worse.
- Firm supply matters to industrial buyers, so green hydrogen will need a gray hydrogen backstop for years.
- Trade barriers on Chinese equipment backfired on European solar in 2013, and Lepercq warns against repeating that.
- His message to solar players: keep pushing electrification and storage, but don't write hydrogen off. It is coming back as both an opportunity and a threat.
The 2012 parallel
Edwin Koot: You built Solairedirect when most people thought unsubsidized utility-scale solar was impossible. Green hydrogen faces the same skepticism today. Where do you see the parallels?
Thierry Lepercq: I always point to one date: 2012. In 2005 and 2006, it all started like crazy, with feed-in tariffs in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Some people called it a bubble. The subsidies were too generous, and then they were halted. France had its moratorium in 2010, and Spain, which was the biggest market in 2008, stopped very early. We had a drastic collapse in Europe in 2012. People forget that. Lots of companies went bust, and lots of people said, "It's game over."
But that collapse was not a collapse. It was a transition. Polysilicon, cell, and module prices plunged, and people in India and China started saying, "This expensive green thing for Europeans doesn't make sense for us. We're not rich countries, but we have a resource." Those markets went from zero to jumping in 2012 and 2013. And in 2013 we inaugurated the first merchant, non-subsidized solar park in Chile, together with Chile's energy minister. That was a very powerful signal that solar could stand on its own two feet.
And you see hydrogen in the same spot?
I see the same faulty reasoning, which was to say: we'll change the world with feed-in tariffs. Today the equivalent is mandates like the European RFNBO rules (renewable fuels of non-biological origin). To some extent it worked, and a number of projects came up with immense subsidies. But now lots of people say it's unsustainable. If you force airlines to buy e-fuels at four, five, or six times the price of kerosene, you kill the industry. So today is our 2012 moment, and we're at the bottom. But we learned with solar that if something is compelling from an economic standpoint, people adopt it. Today, the people building solar in South Africa, India, and China are not doing it primarily for climate reasons. It's cheaper, and it's homegrown.
Serve the customer first
Lepercq keeps returning to the energy trilemma: security, competitiveness, decarbonization, in that order. He thinks Europe flipped it.
Thierry Lepercq: The first thing you ask from energy is security of supply. The second is affordability. The third is decarbonization. What we did wrong in Europe is put decarbonization first, on the assumption that we were so rich and powerful that security and competitiveness didn't count. Those two came back with a vengeance.
Fossil fuels are the wrong answer to that. They're an illusion of energy security, because they expose you to foreign and sometimes hostile powers. But the hydrogen world has its own blind spot. People say competitiveness isn't an issue and ask for €6, 8, 10, even 20 per kilogram. That's the same mistake solar people made 15 years ago when they asked for hundreds of euros per megawatt-hour because their product was "decarbonized." You don't exist as a supplier without a customer. The first person you want to serve is not the government; it's the customer.
You've long argued for working backward from the end goal. What's behind that?
At Engie, I introduced an approach called backcasting. It's just mountaineering. You look at the summit. Anybody who goes on a mountain trip without knowing where the summit is will find trouble. Ask any fossil fuel board whether we'll still be in the fossil era in 2100. Nobody says yes. So if everybody agrees on the endpoint, why wait for temperatures to go through the roof and wars to break out?
Electrons are wonderful, and electrification is very promising. But even the boldest forecasts put electricity at maybe 50% of final energy. You need molecules, especially to bring security to the system.
The real bottleneck: trust, rates, and EPC
Edwin Koot: Developers want 15-year offtake contracts before building. Industrial buyers won't pay €5 to €7 per kilogram. How do we break the deadlock?
Thierry Lepercq: The problem today is trust, above all from the offtakers in chemicals, steel, shipping, and mobility. Trust that it can work economically and be delivered. That trust has been broken over the last couple of years, and it has to be shared with banks and investors too, because they're the ones putting up the money.
Two things make it harder. The first is interest rates. Long-term rates have gone up by roughly another 100 basis points over the last six months, and hydrogen is extremely capital-intensive, just like solar. On top of that, there's what I see as a crazy absorption factor: AI infrastructure is sucking trillions of euros of savings out of the system. Natural gas prices are higher right now, but futures are supposed to be back to normal by 2028 or 2029. The long-term competitiveness challenge for hydrogen is unchanged, and a closed strait today doesn't change the dynamics fundamentally.
The second is EPC. Until a few years ago, everyone said the issue was electrolyzer prices. Now there's a price war in China, and you can get electrolyzers at maybe €100 per kilowatt. But that isn't reflected in EPC prices, which go way above €2,500 per kilowatt. A banker wants a credible EPC contractor to say, "I've put together the electrolyzers, the compressors, the balance of plant, and it will work for the next 20 years." For solar, that's largely commoditized. For hydrogen, we're far from it.
Is anyone solving that?
Some Chinese companies are attacking the experience curve head-on by doing everything under one roof. Envision makes its own electrolyzers, develops its own wind projects, does its own EPC, and runs a green ammonia plant in Inner Mongolia. Sinopec is doing something similar, including a big project in Saudi Arabia with ACWA Power. People should watch those models.
What about buyers who need reliability?
Green hydrogen will be subject to variability and seasonality for many years. So if you want the trust of offtakers, you need to give them a backstop with something that exists, not something that will come, God willing. Something firm, that can be measured and delivered. In practice, that means mixing green with gray.
Protectionism: "the same stupid 2013 thing"
Edwin Koot: How do geopolitical tensions play into this?
Thierry Lepercq: They help, and they hinder. Start with the hindering. Some people want protectionism on equipment. In 2013, Europe said it didn't want Chinese modules anymore and introduced very strong import restrictions. The European module industry was not revived. The European market collapsed even faster. Europe was 70% of the global solar market in 2011 and 7% by 2018. Within two years of the restrictions being lifted, the European market multiplied by eight. Now lots of people in Brussels and elsewhere want to do the same thing again. If the China bashing ramps up, it's a kiss of death for anything renewable. And the sun we use isn't imported from China.
Instability is also bad. High energy prices might seem good for renewables, but people say, "It's high today, it might be low tomorrow." Higher interest rates and financial instability hurt.
The positive side is that people are realizing that importing everything makes no sense. We saw it with Russia, and then we said, "Let's replace Russia with the US," which is nearly as stupid. You're putting all your eggs in the same basket. Security means diversification and resilience.
How it actually gets built
Edwin Koot: Should we aggregate demand through consortia, or convince one government to lead?
Thierry Lepercq: Seven years ago, the Chief of Staff of the European Commission asked me what Europe's biggest advantage in hydrogen was. I said it's not the resource, because solar and wind are far better in North Africa and elsewhere. It's not technology either. I told him we have a weapon of mass construction: the local utility, the German- or European-style. It brings people together and signs 20-year contracts for water, energy, whatever. On the basis of those contracts, backed by the trust of hundreds of thousands or millions of people, you can raise money and build. Something less risky costs less. That's what made solar bankable.
So what we need is not to wait for Brussels or Berlin or Paris. Ports, local governments, and groups of companies should say, "We're in charge. It's our responsibility as stewards of our region to have a plan." And it should start with one or two hubs that show the way. There was a first person on Everest, and then lots of people followed. That is where we are.
I'd also say begging for subsidies is a dead end. We were very happy with feed-in tariffs in the early years. But very soon we realized it was a poison. It was showering money on tons of people, and sometimes it brought corruption. You want something frugal, because frugality brings out the best in people.
Where will those first projects happen, and what will the supply look like?
Probably outside Europe, where the resource is. You're better off producing hydrogen in Oman, Morocco, or Gujarat, where you have solar, space, and, in most cases, desalinated water. If you can produce at €1 to 1.50 per kilogram, and today it's a little over €2, then shipping it as ammonia and cracking it in Europe gives you a landed cost around €2.50 to €3. Wind in Scandinavia and solar in Spain can land in the same range, so it's a combination. Gray hydrogen is around €2 today, and long-term natural gas equates to about €1 per kilogram of hydrogen. This is not a gap of 1 to 10.
With dozens of suppliers plus your own production, nobody can close a strait and cut you off. You can fix prices for 20 years, and that's a life changer for industry. It might even bring power-intensive industry back to Europe.
And the timeline?
The forecasts from a few years ago, 20 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030, were put together with no rationale. We're going to land at a fraction of that, after tens of billions spent to get a miserable result. I wouldn't make a new forecast for 2030. But if we get those first two or three market-driven projects, like our Chile project in 2013, then I believe we're on track by 2040 for hydrogen to take over from oil and gas. Once you reach the tipping point, everything turns upside down.
A message to solar developers
Edwin Koot: What should our solar and storage community take away?
Thierry Lepercq: You've had incredible years, but the last couple have been more challenging. In Europe, volumes are plateauing or falling, interest rates hurt, and grids are a challenge. With so much solar in Europe, wholesale prices and capture rates are collapsing. The good news is you're still very competitive. So my first message is: go down the electrification path as far as you can. We'll need solar for air conditioning, for EVs, for data centers. Pair it with batteries and be smart about use cases.
On hydrogen, a lot of people used to see it as an opportunity or a threat, and now many say it's just gone. It's going to come back as both. It's an opportunity because most of the hydrogen over the next 10 to 15 years will come from solar. Solar and hydrogen are two sides of the same coin. It's a threat if you don't give it any thought, because that hydrogen will likely be produced in larger quantities and in different places: Morocco, Mauritania, Brazil, India.
In 2011 and 2012, lots of French solar companies went bust because they were entirely focused on France. We survived because we built projects in Latin America and India based on competitive auctions. Think about the new wave. It's coming. You have some time, and that's good news, but once it arrives, it will be enormous, and you'd rather surf it than be flattened by it.
A note on the book: Lepercq's third book, out soon, is a written dialogue between a national-conservative US professor and a Franco-German journalist. Over six debates, they argue about the economy, energy, and much more. He says the goal is not to caricature the other side. In his view, energy security and affordability are fair questions from people on every side
