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Creamer Media's Mining Weekly today interviewed Valterra Platinum CEO Craig Miller, who has just returned from the Hydrogen Council's Global CEO Summit 2025 in South Korea with important insight into the status of the hydrogen economy.
The Seoul Summit, attended by more than 200 CEOs and senior executives from the world's leading hydrogen-linked businesses, focused on how hydrogen is produced and sold, and how regulations can support the platinum group metal (PGM)-linked role of the hydrogen economy to decarbonise the world and to combat climate change.
"I certainly think that hydrogen - and the industry specifically around that - is moving forward," Miller pointed out in the Teams interview with Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)
It is a large snowball with $110-billion invested in hydrogen projects over the last five years and $35-billion in the last 12 months alone.
PGMs are poised to continue to play a key role and very encouraging are the 200-plus refuelling stations in South Korea that service the platinum-based hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) and FCEV buses in Greater Seoul.
Where PGM-catalysed proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers are used is also creating encouragement for the road ahead.
Pathways towards translation into meaningful demand are being assisted by smart private-public partnerships.
Mining Weekly: It's great to be able to chat to you on your return from the Seoul Summit. How good is a meeting like this for the demand outlook for PGMs?
Miller: It was a really encouraging and great week to be in Seoul, together with some of the other CEOs, who are particularly focused on creating that hydrogen production, and also then the demand segments. On the outlook for PGMs, where we see the opportunity is really in PEM electrolysers, so in the production of green hydrogen, and then also in mobility, in fuel cell electric vehicles. I think it's fair to say that there is certainly a lot of supply and investment going into hydrogen, and that's very key, but then also, importantly, looking for those demand use cases.
Certainly, the opportunities are there and we just need to see those translate into real outcomes. But I'm really encouraged. Having spent the week in Seoul and having the opportunity to travel around the city in a fuel cell electric vehicle, the Hyundai Nexo, that was really impressive. It's a really nifty little car and it was great to see the opportunity, just in terms of how that's translating into tangible people mobility, and the opportunity for me also to see some refuelling of the hydrogen into these fuel cell electric vehicles. In Seoul, there's a refuelling station right outside the People's Assembly, which is the equivalent of their national parliament, and so it really demonstrated for me the importance of hydrogen and hydrogen in the Korean economy, and how they see it as a step towards decarbonisation and supporting the energy transition.
A strong call was made to build the global hydrogen ecosystem faster and to unlock commercial scale demand by 2030. Do you get the impression that the call will be heeded?
There's a lot of work to be done into to recognising that call, from both a policy perspective, in certain jurisdictions of the world, in standardising some of the standards in terms of hydrogen production and transportation and its utilisation. I think that's really key. But I think what was very apparent by the participants, and effectively, the market capitalisation of Hydrogen Council companies attending is almost $9-trillion and so some of the largest global companies participate at the Hydrogen Council.
The real momentum around hydrogen is certainly there and the opportunity that we still see in its role to play in decarboni...