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What it is

H2C operates the world’s first global market and registry for Green Hydrogen Certificates. Launched from Edinburgh in October 2024, the platform enables the green premiums and carbon removal rights of green hydrogen to be traded independently from the physical fuel. This creates a market mechanism that makes green hydrogen production financially viable by distributing decarbonisation costs across the full supply chain rather than concentrating them on a single buyer. H2C was established by First Carbon Investments with backing from global partners. The platform focuses on well-to-consumer maritime decarbonisation — connecting fuel producers, shipping companies, and brands or cargo owners through a unified certificate market with proprietary Green Premium Certificates.

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My role

Chief Growth Officer. James Varga leads growth strategy, market development, and the application of fintech and marketplace infrastructure patterns to the energy transition. The role applies skills built through open banking — constructing trust infrastructure, building registries, and creating interoperable markets in regulated environments — to the emerging green hydrogen economy.

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The proposition

The global hydrogen economy faces a fundamental market failure. Ninety-six per cent of green hydrogen production projects remain at pre-construction phases because low-carbon fuels require higher prices and longer commitments to reach production. Without a mechanism to finance the premium, projects cannot reach final investment decision. Green Premium Certificates solve this by uncoupling the environmental attributes of green hydrogen from the physical fuel. Fuel producers gain revenue visibility at the point of financial investment decision. Shipping companies achieve compliance cost management through real-time fleet modelling and fuel-switching scenario optimisation. Brands and cargo owners can decarbonise Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions directly with traceability to source, eliminating dependency on third-party offsets. The platform is interoperable across multiple emerging standards for green hydrogen provenance, providing a single registry and audit trail for international trade.

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Partnerships

H2C works with Lloyd’s Register to accelerate maritime fuel switching, providing credibility and regulatory alignment. A research partnership with Heriot-Watt University supports the technical and policy foundations. Simon Bird, former Bristol Port CEO, and other maritime industry leaders serve on the advisory board alongside Dr John Wright, former CEO of Clydesdale and Northern Banks.

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What it proves

H2C demonstrates that the platform and market infrastructure skills developed in fintech transfer directly to energy transition markets. Building trust infrastructure, navigating regulatory frameworks, connecting buyers and sellers in markets with high compliance overhead — these are the same challenges that shaped open banking and DirectID. The domain is different. The operating pattern is the same. The company also represents a commercial thesis about where value sits in the energy transition: not in the fuel itself, but in the market infrastructure that makes trade possible. This mirrors the pattern in financial services where value moved from the transaction to the trust and data layer underneath it.

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Published writing

Navigating the Tech Industry’s Path to Net-Zero examines how green hydrogen and Guarantees of Origin can help the tech industry balance AI-driven energy demand with decarbonisation targets. The Green Hydrogen Challenge addresses the affordability gap and proposes Green Premium Certificates as a market mechanism to bridge it. Building green AI compute in Scotland connects the energy transition to Scotland’s AI infrastructure opportunity.