Zak's Traders Cafe spoke with Howard White, interim chairman of Hydrogen Utopia International, about a significant strategic pivot: moving from a focus on hydrogen for transportation to supplying ultra-low-cost, "super green" hydrogen to heavy industry in the GCC. 

What follows is a clear-eyed look at the technology, the economics, the environmental opportunity, and the commercial plan Daniel and I discussed with Howard.

Why the pivot from vehicles to industry?

Hydrogen for cars, trucks and buses has been promised for years but growth is still modest. As Howard pointed out, there are fewer than 100,000 hydrogen vehicles worldwide today, with roughly 70% of them in the Far East. At small scale, hydrogen is expensive—which makes it a weak competitor to petrol, diesel and even electricity for most road transport applications.

That reality prompted Hydrogen Utopia to take a fresh look at where hydrogen demand is both large and price-sensitive: heavy industry. Cement and steel plants are enormous energy consumers and major CO2 emitters. A typical, reasonably sized cement plant could take on the order of 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen per year. If hydrogen can be provided at a price close to natural gas, industry can decarbonize at scale.

The Inentech advantage: TRL9, modular and proven

Hydrogen Utopia has secured exclusive access to Inentech technology—a process with a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 9 , meaning it is fully commercialized and proven. Importantly, the company is modularizing the technology to match the operational scale of industrial customers. Rather than building massive single plants, the approach is to deploy multiple modular facilities collocated with cement or steel plants.

""We have been running [this technology] for 20 years and fully operational for 13 years.""

That operational history is critical: it reduces deployment risk and allows Hydrogen Utopia to offer long-term offtake agreements and predictable pricing for industrial customers.

Target pricing: super green hydrogen at about 1.5 cents/kg

Perhaps the most striking claim Howard made is the target delivered hydrogen price: about 1.5 cents per kilogram (in certain GCC countries, supported by grants and interest-free loans). At that level, hydrogen becomes highly competitive with natural gas for many industrial uses.

Key enablers of this ultra-low cost are:

• Using non-recyclable mixed waste (including plastics, tyres and oil sludge) as feedstock.
• Modular, proven Inentech deployments co-located with customers—eliminating hydrogen transport costs.
• Financial support in the GCC for "super green" hydrogen projects (grants, favourable financing), which conventional renewables-to-electrolyser projects may not receive.

Waste-to-hydrogen: scale and environmental benefits

The process not only produces hydrogen, it also destroys problematic plastic additives and toxic contaminants that traditional recycling and incineration do not address. Howard highlighted several environmental advantages:

• Destruction of tens of thousands of pollutants added to plastics (PFAS and other additives).
• Ability to process large volumes—one facility could consume roughly 250,000 tonnes of mixed waste plastics per year . Four such facilities would process 1 million tonnes annually.
• Co-processing of tyres and oil sludge, addressing difficult waste streams (Howard referenced the large tyre stockpiles in Kuwait as an example).

""Plastic is fantastic and it is a material that they should be allowed to produce as much as they want as long as they do something about the destruction of it.""

Revenue model: hydrogen, CO2, fees and credits

Hydrogen Utopia expects multiple revenue streams from each deployment:

• Hydrogen sales —long-term offtake agreements with cement and steel plants (30-year contracts are the target).
• CO2 sales for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) —in the GCC, CO2 has market value for boosting production from mature fields.
• Management fees —Hydrogen Utopia plans to run each project as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) and earn fees/ownership percentages.
• Carbon credits —deployments will generate significant CO2 savings and may qualify for credits.

Howard expects each SPV to be comfortably profitable (internal rates of return in the high teens), even at the low hydrogen price point. The company will take a conservative, staged approach: secure non-binding offtake LOIs first, then raise project financing supported by LOIs and regional funders.

Market focus: GCC first, regulatory tailwinds

The GCC (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and other Gulf states) is Hydrogen Utopia’s primary target market. Reasons include:

• Large industrial clusters (cement, steel, petrochemicals) with substantial hydrogen demand.
• Regional policymakers offering grants and concessional financing for waste-to-hydrogen "super green" projects.
• Existing demand for CO2 in EOR operations.

Howard is optimistic that with the right legislation—such as mandatory separation of plastics—the feedstock supply challenge could be addressed quickly. He expects government and oil-company interest (including state majors like Saudi Aramco and regional sovereign projects) as a pragmatic alternative to international attempts at capping plastics production.

Commercial approach and risk management

Hydrogen Utopia plans to:

• Deploy projects as SPVs collocated with customers to avoid hydrogen transport and simplify integration.
• Secure long-term offtakes (30 years) with gradual pricing: slightly higher in the first five years, stable and low thereafter.
• Leverage grants and interest-free lending available for waste-to-hydrogen solutions in the region.
• Start modestly and scale pragmatically—no "ask us for half a billion dollars up front" approach.

What success looks like

In Howard’s view, a small number of well-placed facilities in the GCC could make a substantial dent in both hydrogen cost curves and global plastic pollution. A handful of 250,000-ton-per-year waste-processing facilities would divert massive volumes of waste from landfills and oceans while producing competitively priced hydrogen for decarbonizing heavy industry.

He also stressed the broader strategic appeal: for oil majors and national oil companies, investing in waste-to-hydrogen can soften the political and reputational pressure arising from plastic production, while providing new revenue streams.

Outlook and next steps

Hydrogen Utopia is now focused on signing LOIs and offtake agreements with cement and steel producers in the GCC, structuring SPVs for projects, and engaging regional funders who are keen to support super green hydrogen. The combination of a proven TRL9 technology, modular deployment, strong regional incentives, and multiple revenue streams makes this a high-conviction pivot for the company.

Conclusion

The story here is pragmatic: use a proven industrial technology to turn problem waste into a valuable decarbonization feedstock at scale. By targeting large, price-sensitive industrial consumers in the GCC and pairing modular Inentech plants with favourable financing and policy support, Hydrogen Utopia aims to deliver hydrogen at a price that changes the equation for heavy industry decarbonization.

If successful, the model could both undercut the cost barriers facing hydrogen adoption in industry and create a sizable new pathway for responsibly destroying mixed, non-recyclable plastics and other hazardous waste.