How to Become a Supplier to UK Green Hydrogen Projects

For UK green hydrogen projects, start with the buyers, not the tender portals. The market is the set of electrolytic plants backed by the government's Hydrogen Allocation Rounds.

HAR1 invited 17 projects to negotiate. In the Autumn Budget 2024, GOV.UK confirmed support for 11 of them, with £90 million in capital grants and over £2 billion in revenue support. The second round, HAR2, shortlisted 27 projects that are still going through due diligence.

Before an EPC is appointed, three roles at the developer shape the supplier list: the project director, the head of development and the procurement lead. The EPC is the main contractor for engineering, procurement and construction. Once it is appointed, its package managers buy most of the fabrication, civils, electrical and mechanical work.

The electrolyser maker controls a smaller, technical slice. You can see this in public announcements. Plug Power announced in 2025 that it will supply 15 MW of PEM electrolyzers to Carlton Power's Trafford Green Hydrogen project in Greater Manchester, a HAR1 project with Carlton Power as developer. One supplier, one package. The rest of the site still has to be bought.

So the job has two parts. Find the right person on each project while the scope is still forming. Then open with one package you can clearly deliver. The worst way in is a cold bid after the supplier list is fixed. By then you are just a price.

Everything below is about electrolytic production plants.

What counts as a UK hydrogen project supplier now?

Electrolytic hydrogen is made by splitting water with electricity. It is the "green" route. Hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture is a separate market with different buyers, and I leave it out here.

The Hydrogen Allocation Rounds are the reason this market exists for suppliers. Through each round, the government pays winning projects revenue support for 15 years. Each winner signs a Low Carbon Hydrogen Agreement, which is the contract that pays it.

The government's own sector page says the rounds give suppliers access to new demand. It lists supply chain openings in electrolysers and their stacks, hydrogen piping and power electronics.

The hydrogen production delivery roadmap aims for as much as 10 GW of capacity by 2030, all of it low carbon and at least half of it electrolytic. It says allocation rounds are meant to become annual from HAR3. It plans up to 1.5 GW of capacity over HAR3 and HAR4 together.

For a supplier, that gives the market a long tail. First come the plants. Then come 15 years of supported production, and the plants have to run, be inspected and be maintained for all that time.

Most of the work on these sites goes to firms like these:

• Fabricators: skids, pipe spools, steelwork, enclosures
• Civil contractors: groundworks, foundations, drainage, roads
• Electrical installers: high and low voltage work, cabling, earthing, power electronics
• Mechanical firms: hydrogen piping, compression, storage connections
• Controls and instrumentation firms
• Water treatment specialists
• Grid connection contractors
• Service firms: commissioning, inspection, maintenance

Which HAR1 and HAR2 projects are actually in play?

There are two official lists, and they are at two different stages.

HAR1 is the earlier wave. In August 2023 the government invited 17 projects to negotiations. Together they came to 262 MW, sited in England, Scotland and Wales. It expected to award contracts for up to 250 MW, as long as they were affordable and good value for money.

It also said plainly that reaching negotiations did not guarantee a contract. In the Autumn Budget 2024 the government backed 11 of the HAR1 projects.

HAR2 is the live one. Applications opened on 14 December 2023 and closed on 19 April 2024, for up to 875 MW, according to the roadmap. The published HAR2 shortlist holds 27 electrolytic projects, spread over England, Scotland and Wales.

All 27 move to a next stage that the HAR2 projects notice describes as due diligence and a cost assessment.

Read the small print before you plan around that list. The government says a place on the shortlist does not guarantee support, and it does not expect every project to make it. Final decisions rest on value for money and affordability. Shortlisted developers were told to keep maturing their projects and to push their costs down.

That last instruction matters most to suppliers. A developer under cost pressure is still deciding how to build, who builds it and what each package should cost. That is when a supplier with a clear package and a believable price can still shape the plan.

Put both lists together and you have 44 entries. Drop the 6 HAR1 projects without confirmed support and you have at most 38 live projects, fewer if any project appears on both lists. That is a market you can fit on one tab of a spreadsheet.

Who actually decides what gets bought on a hydrogen plant?

A green hydrogen plant has five groups of people with a say in it. Each one owns a different part of the buying.

Two things to watch when you use it.

First, the people who decide differ by package. A civils firm and a commissioning firm should not send the same message to the same person, and neither should pitch every role at once.

Second, titles need care. "Package manager" with a named discipline is a real buyer. A plain "manager" with no scope is usually someone who cannot say yes.

When I build a list for a niche like this, I start by asking which person actually signed off on the supplier's last few comparable jobs.

When should a supplier contact developers versus EPCs?

Hydrogen projects move slowly, and outbound timing has to fit that.

A HAR2 project still in due diligence will not sign a package order next month. I tell suppliers what I tell every client: a first call with a project director can happen within 30 days, while the order from it may land 4+ months later.

In B2B, a sales cycle of 6, 9 or 12 months is normal, and a hydrogen plant waiting on a cost assessment sits at the long end of that. That is why your outreach window opens well before anyone writes a package scope.

Use these rules to decide who to approach:

1. No EPC named yet, project in negotiation or due diligence: go to the developer. Speak to the project director or head of development about how your package reduces cost or schedule risk.
2. EPC appointed, scope still being split: go to the EPC's package manager for your discipline. Keep the developer contact warm, because the developer often has a view on who gets invited.
3. Package already out to tender: bid if you are invited. If you are not, ask to be considered for the next package, then spend your effort on a project that is earlier in its cycle.
4. Your work touches the electrolyser itself: stack service, power electronics or skids built to its design all count. Run a parallel line to the OEM's engineering or service lead.
5. Your work sits at the user's site: a pipeline connection, storage or delivery equipment are examples. Add the offtaker, otherwise leave them out.
6. A new allocation round opens: start again with that round's developers, since the roadmap points to a round every year from HAR3.

Do not pay for intent data here. Intent data is only a tool, and it earns its cost when the market is large. You have fewer than 40 live projects. The official lists already name every project and its developer. What they do not give you is the people, and that is where the work goes.

How do fabrication, civils, electrical and service suppliers get in?

Each role in the chain judges you on something different:

• Developers care about capability and schedule risk.
• EPCs care about whether you deliver the package on time and handle the interfaces with the other contractors.
• OEMs care about technical fit with their equipment and about service support over the plant's life.

Your first line should answer the question that particular buyer asks.

None of these opens with the company history or the full capability brochure.

When a supplier tells me energy developers never reply, my first suspicion is the way the offer is packaged. Often it is a packaging problem, and lead generation gets the blame. More messages will not fix it. One client told my team, "You're translation experts. You translate what we do into what people actually want to buy." That translation is most of the work here.

"We do fabrication, civils and maintenance for the energy sector" gives a busy project director nothing to act on. "We build water treatment skids for electrolyser plants, delivered on schedule" does.

That second line only works if it is true for you, so pick the package and commit to it. I would rather see a supplier commit to one offer for one audience for a full year than chase every project with a different pitch.

What should a regional supplier do by territory?

The two official lists are national. Your sales effort should not be. Turn them into regional worklists:

Group both lists by nation, then by your service radius. Flag remote sites where getting crews and kit there is a cost, and add nearby industrial users that may be offtakers.

The two source lists are the HAR1 negotiations list and the HAR2 shortlist. The HAR1 list is the 17 projects invited to negotiate, of which 11 were later backed.

The HAR2 shortlist gives the lead developer and location for every project, so you can build the first worklist straight from it, then add the HAR1 projects.

Give each developer one owner across all its sites. A developer with plants in two nations is still one buying organization. I divide territories by account and rep, so two people on the team never reach the same contact.

On these lists it matters fast, because several developers appear in more than one region. If the Scottish rep and the English rep both email the same head of development in the same month, you look disorganized to a buyer who will remember it.

Use proximity where it is real. I target a local audience whenever the market allows it, because a prospect who knows you are nearby reads the first message differently. A civils firm close to a site has a better first line than any national contractor can write.

Developers have a reason to listen. The HAR2 application guidance from DESNZ assesses projects on an economic benefits and supply chain development criterion, including their contribution to hydrogen supply chains in the UK. Do not oversell it. Government's HAR2 clarification answers say a higher share of CAPEX from UK suppliers does not directly earn a higher score. Being local helps the developer's story. It is not an automatic point.

The order of this work is the order I use for any market: start from the customers who already paid you, check whether deal value times the number of buyers is worth it, and only then pick geography. I go through it in more detail in how I pick the market before writing any copy.

What does a practical supplier outreach plan look like?

1. Build the project sheet. Take both official lists. For each project, record the developer, the nation and the stage, HAR1 confirmed or HAR2 shortlist, plus the EPC and OEM once they are public.
2. Find the people. Look for 3 to 5 contacts per project across the developer, EPC and OEM, using the titles in the buyer table.
3. Clean the list. Before you send anything, run the checks I use to audit a lead list.
4. Write around one package. The first message asks for a short call about one package on that project. It does not try to sell the whole company.
5. Sequence it. Leave real time between follow-ups. Plan 5 to 6 touches across email and LinkedIn, because one or two messages are never enough. Most replies we see arrive after the third follow-up, so the opener carries less weight than people expect. Keep going until the project's stage becomes clear.
6. Track every project. Keep every lead in a CRM. Log each contact against a project stage and a next date. Contact people again when something changes, such as a due diligence outcome or an EPC appointment.
7. Hand off. The territory owner takes the call and owns the account from then on.

Before step 4, check that you are ready:

When a supplier already runs its own outreach and only needs the right names, I point them to a custom lead list instead, because it is the fuel for a team that already has the machine. For how a full campaign gets built and managed, see what a cold email agency does, step by step, or the cold email and LinkedIn outreach services I run it through.

Pick one package first. Then reach the person while the scope is still open.

If you supply a HAR1 or HAR2 project and want to talk through which developer or EPC to approach first, book a call. A question is reason enough.