How to read a hydrogen project milestone

Read the verb before the megawatts. An announced project is not necessarily financed, and a facility entering commissioning is not necessarily operating routinely.

The IEA’s Global Hydrogen Review 2026 distinguishes announced projects from committed projects and discusses investment-decision delays. That separation is a useful foundation for reading individual stories.

A project-status check

Use these questions to understand what a milestone can establish. They are not universal legal definitions:

1. Announced: What is proposed, by whom, and where?
2. Feasibility or design: Which study or engineering activity has actually started or finished?
3. Permitted: Which approval was granted, and which remain?
4. Final investment decision (FID): What did the developer authorize, and what conditions were disclosed?
5. Under construction: What physical work is documented?
6. Commissioning: Which equipment or integrated system is being tested?
7. Operating: What output or service was delivered, over what period?

A phased development may have units at different stages. Do not force a single status onto the whole project.

Keep units intact

If a release describes electrical capacity in MW, do not rewrite it as annual hydrogen production. Ask for the developer's intended operating hours and output assumptions before attempting a conversion.

A worked reading example

Suppose a developer announces that a project has reached final investment decision. That may establish that the developer has authorized the next stage it describes. It does not, on its own, establish that all permits are complete, every construction contract has been performed, or that hydrogen is already available to a customer.

A useful project-status note would keep the announced stage separate from the next stated dependency: for example, FID now, construction evidence next, commissioning after that, and operating output only when a defined period is reported. This makes a changed date or milestone meaningful without treating every announcement as the same kind of progress.

Keep a dated record

Retain the source date, event date, exact milestone, and next promised check. When a target moves, preserve the earlier target and explain the change.

A later update should report a changed status, not recycle an old announcement under a fresh date.