H2Global accelerates clean hydrogen market creation through a pioneering double-auction mechanism combined with an intermediary—Hintco—that enters contracts with sellers and buyers that often struggle to connect independently at an early stage of market development. This intermediary then buys products—which are typically more expensive than their carbon-intensive counterparts—to sell them through an auction at a lower price to end consumers supporting demand build up. The price difference is covered by public funding though conceivably it could also be covered by climate funds, private capital, or a combination thereof. In so doing, the H2Global mechanism simulates a functioning market for clean hydrogen, helping shift market creation forward.

The H2Global mechanism is the closest analog to a global market maker. It is unique in that it:

1. covers the whole value chain, from production to consumption.
2. provides continuous price discovery on the producers’ and consumers’ side.
3. provides flexibility to offtakers—made up of companies from hard-to-abate sectors like chemicals and steel—by ensuring access to large volumes of product, enhancing regulatory certainty through standardization of the contracts, and compensating costs until cleaner energy becomes more competitive.
4. promotes liquidity and encourages the emergence of secondary markets by using standardised short-term offtake contracts (1 year).
5. allows for swift responses to market changes by offering short-term offtake contracts.
6. provides bankability to producers by offering long-term purchase contracts (10 years) at a fixed price, reducing uncertainty.
7. reduces barriers to entry, promotes fair market pricing and efficient allocation of resources by operating a "double-auction scheme," where competitive auctions are held for both the supply and demand side.
8. ensures most efficient use of available (and often limited) funds for maximum impact, as it allows any increase in demand or changes in prices to be quickly incorporated.
9. mitigates the risk of financing stranded assets by only accessing public funding upon physical delivery of the products.

Exporters and importers of clean hydrogen and other similar products can all make use of H2Global’s mechanism. It is a flexible instrument that can empower governments to shape the global market for these products through customized funding windows. In general, individual funding windows can be defined in terms of geography, contract duration, product selection, and sustainability criteria. Whoever provides the funds for the compensation payments determines the design, specifications, and objectives of the respective funding window, ensuring that they are in line with their respective targets such as energy security, industrial competitiveness, etc. Funding windows can be deployed by a single country (import/export window or domestic window), by two countries (joint import/export window), or more (multilateral window), depending on the participating governments’ objectives.