Poland Created Hydrogen Bus Demand. Polenergia Still Walked Away From Supply.

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Poland did something hydrogen advocates have spent years saying governments need to do: it created real demand. Public subsidies helped put hydrogen buses into Polish cities, refueling infrastructure received support, and renewable-hydrogen projects were offered public money as well. By April 2026, Poland had 153 hydrogen buses registered, 140 already in service and another 107 contracted. This was no longer a handful of demonstrations waiting for a market to appear.

The industrial-policy logic behind Poland’s program was straightforward. Subsidized buses would create hydrogen demand. That demand would support refueling stations. Stations and customers would justify local hydrogen production. With enough production and infrastructure in place, a domestic low-carbon hydrogen industry could begin to emerge.

Polenergia got much farther than the typical hydrogen project before it walked away. The full TFIE Strategy Briefing follows the financing, the larger abandoned project and what Rzeszów had to do next.

Polenergia, Poland’s largest private energy group, provides a particularly useful test of that theory because its Nowa Sarzyna project got well beyond the usual announcement stage. The company planned a 5 MW renewable-hydrogen plant capable of producing about 500 tonnes a year, together with distribution and refueling infrastructure. Hystar had been contracted to supply the electrolyzers, the International Finance Corporation was supporting development spending and part of the equipment purchase, and Polish public funding was available for related refueling infrastructure.

By October 2024, the project had a building permit and all eight electrolyzer stacks had completed factory acceptance testing. In hydrogen-project terms, that is unusually advanced. This was not a memorandum of understanding attached to a distant production target. More importantly, it had a customer.

Rzeszów’s municipal transit operator was procuring hydrogen for 20 fuel-cell buses, and Polenergia won a 15-year fuel-supply tender in October 2024. The proposed agreement was worth about PLN120 million. Government-backed demand, an established energy company, permitted local production, contracted equipment, public support and a long-duration municipal customer were all present.

Polenergia nevertheless decided in January 2025 that it could not conclude the Rzeszów agreement. The company cited legal issues associated with the tender and the risk that it would not be able to deliver hydrogen on schedule. Those qualifications matter; this was not simply a declaration that hydrogen cost too much.

But the decision also came during a broader reassessment of Polenergia’s hydrogen strategy. Its subsequent corporate strategy called for a gradual withdrawal from hydrogen transportation, while later disclosures pointed to the development of the green-hydrogen market, project investment risk and limited financing possibilities.

That makes the case more interesting than a failed municipal tender. Poland had deliberately created transport demand and supported the infrastructure and production side as well. An established energy company had taken a local green-hydrogen project through permitting, equipment procurement and customer acquisition, then looked at the complete investment case and reduced its exposure.

Meanwhile, the buses did not disappear. Once municipalities buy fuel-cell buses, they have created a requirement for hydrogen that lasts for years whether or not the hoped-for local production ecosystem develops around them. The public subsidy can make the vehicle affordable at purchase without making the resulting fuel system competitive or resilient over its operating life.

None of this means Poland has no need for lower-carbon hydrogen. It already consumes substantial quantities of fossil-derived hydrogen in refining, chemicals and other industrial processes. Those are concentrated existing markets where the molecule is already required and where replacing high-carbon production is a real decarbonization task.

Hydrogen buses are a different proposition. Their demand has to be created even though cities already have a mature direct-electric alternative. Poland’s experience is increasingly showing that creating that demand through subsidies does not guarantee that economical local supply will follow.

The deeper story includes Polenergia’s much larger hydrogen project, the competitive pressures it identified when explaining its retreat, and what happened when Rzeszów still needed fuel after its expected local supplier stepped away.

Read the full evidence and analysis in TFIE Strategy Briefing.