How are key renewable energies faring at the end of 2025? Guest host and energy analyst Bridget van Dorsten talks through developments in geothermal, hydrogen and wind.

Dec 2, 2025

Bridget Van Dorsten explores the rocky landscape of renewable energies like hydrogen, geothermal, and wind as 2025 wraps up. She discusses oil majors' pullback from renewables and the challenges hydrogen faces with costs and policies. Geothermal shows resilience despite recent shifts, while wind grapples with installation drops and supply chain issues. Amidst these hurdles, some signs of stabilization emerge, alongside strategic updates and investor insights that shape the future of these crucial energy sectors.

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INSIGHT

Majors Keep Options Open

Oil majors kept strategic optionality, balancing renewables and oil/gas to satisfy investors.
That financial scale gives them outsized influence but slows a decisive low-carbon shift.

INSIGHT

Hydrogen’s Three Core Barriers

Hydrogen faces three persistent barriers: cost, policy, and offtake uncertainty.
Without mandated demand, green hydrogen needs very high carbon prices to reach parity.

ADVICE

Secure Offtake Before FID

Focus project FIDs where offtake is certain, like refineries decarbonizing internal demand.
Avoid speculative, merchant hydrogen builds without long-term contracts.

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At the start of the year things were looking uncertain for nascent renewables like hydrogen and geothermal. With policy support from the previous US administration they had boomed with the IRA, then came July 2025 and the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which tore up tax credits and removed incentives for those renewable technologies. As we approach the end of the year, has anything changed for the better? How are hydrogen, wind and geothermal looking as we prepare for 2026?

Regular host Sylvia Leyva Martinez is on maternity leave until the middle of next year, so her fellow energy analyst Bridget van Dorsten is stepping up to keep the mic warm. Bridget is an analyst researching hydrogen, but she has an engineer’s understanding of technologies across the energy spectrum. She doesn’t just cover that ‘frustrating, inefficient, expensive-to-move-around molecule’ (as she calls it); she knows what’s real in the energy world and what’s just hype.

To kick off her tenure as host she’s picked out a few highlights from the year relating to those important renewables – geothermal, hydrogen and wind. Looking back on those conversations Sylvia had with experts on those fields, Bridget then gives the energy analyst’s view on how things are progressing in the current policy environment. Expect in-depth analysis on what’s changed, and the key stats and forecasts you need to know as 2026 approaches.

Plus, Bridget looks back on the conversation Sylvia had with energy investors back in July, when we saw the oil and gas majors like Shell and Equinor announce they were scaling back their climate ambitions under pressure from investors. Bridget explores why the energy transition is unfolding slower than expected, how shareholder pressure is reshaping low-carbon strategies, and why companies like TotalEnergies and Shell have retreated from their plans to phase down fossil fuels.

Bridget will be hosting until mid-next-year, and she wants to know what topics you want explored.

Connect with the show and let us know what you want to hear, on LinkedIn, X or Bluesky at @interchangeshow, and follow the podcast so you don’t miss the episodes coming in the new year.

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