For Andy Marsh — and for Plug Power [PLUG] — the secret to success is experience. “We didn’t enter hydrogen yesterday. We’ve been doing it for 25 years.”
Headquartered in Slingerlands, New York, Plug Power develops products used to liquefy, store, transport and dispense hydrogen, including electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen.
The goal is to make hydrogen “economical, easy and everywhere”.
Marsh himself got his start as a Technical Director at Bell Labs, a premier research facility. In 2001, he co-founded Valere Power, a power solutions company for the communications industry, and served as its CEO for seven years. In 2008, he was appointed CEO of Plug Power, and has driven the company’s transformation from a hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer to a full-spectrum hydrogen solutions provider.
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Navigating a Difficult Market
Even as legislators seem to be turning their back on green energy, how is Plug maintaining its momentum? To Marsh, it’s a matter of value.
“In many cases, you have to be more than just green.”
He provides the example of forklifts powered by Plug products. Thanks to hydrogen power, “they’re able to be more productive [and] run longer. They fuel faster, you need less labor, so the value proposition isn’t just sustainability.”
Consistency is another key factor. “Making things that work and run every day, that’s what Plug does. And that really differentiates us.”
While solar and wind have become prominent targets of the Trump administration, hydrogen has fared better. In June, the US Senate extended 45V hydrogen tax credit eligibility through to the end of 2027. “The recent bill passed in the United States, from a fuel cell point of view, was much more beneficial than the Inflation Reduction Act. Our fuel cells have a tax credit of over 30% through 2032.”
In January, the company closed a loan worth $1.66bn from the Department of Energy, helping to finance the construction of six zero- or low-carbon hydrogen projects in the US.
So far, Plug’s work with the Department of Energy has been positive: “it’s a business environment and it’s transactional. And we’re working to make sure the transaction’s good for the US and good for Plug.”
Attracting top talent is another important element in staying ahead of the curve in a highly competitive sector. Marsh attributes their edge to an accepting culture: “we fundamentally believe everybody adds value … it’s important to the leadership team at Plug, and to the board, that employees like coming here every day.”
Funding Net Zero
As Marsh explains, there are two key drivers for demand for hydrogen, and especially green hydrogen.
The first — sustainability targets set by countries — depends on extra measures such as subsidies to make early-deployment technologies commercially competitive.
The second — industrial processes — has created demand for hydrogen in unexpected places, such as oil refining. By installing electrolyzers, oil refineries are able to generate green hydrogen to power operations, replacing the grey hydrogen usually produced from burning natural gas, and reducing the refinery’s carbon footprint. In September 2024, for example, the company partnered with bp [BP] and Iberdrola [IBDRY] to supply 25MW of electrolyzers for their joint refinery project in Valencia, Spain.
Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production is another driver of hydrogen demand. In October 2023, Plug provided a 280MW electrolyzer system to Danish firm Arcadia eFuels for its SAF plant, with the capacity to produce 120 tons of green hydrogen per day.
Such ongoing projects have helped Plug improve its financials.
In Q2 2025, the company reported a 21% year-over-year increase in revenue, driven by a three-fold increase in electrolyzer revenue. The company’s gross margin also improved from -92% the previous year to -31% in Q2 2025, due in part to reduced costs and improved hydrogen pricing.
Marsh expects the company to reach gross margin breakeven by the end of the year, and potentially to be EBITDA positive by the end of 2026. He outlines three approaches the company is deploying to get there.
First, the company has to reach “about $200m revenue in a quarter”.
Second, it has to lower costs.
Third, it has to expand its service business to maintain longer-term revenue streams.
Ultimately, the area where Marsh foresees the most benefit in cutting costs is not through high-tech, artificial intelligence-driven productivity. Rather, it comes down to something as simple as construction expenses. “If you take a look at the cost of building a hydrogen plant,” Marsh explains, “probably 60%, 65 % of it is construction costs.”
Modular design is likely to help alleviate some of this financial burden, Marsh says. “This is no different than how people may be thinking about how you build homes in the future. We have to design our products so that they can just be dropped in place. There’s very, very little construction next to interconnects happening.”
The benefits of such a system are manifold. “It accelerates the time to market. It makes costs dramatically lower. It makes it possible that hydrogen can compete with other energy sources immediately.”
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