Low-carbon hydrogen and e-fuels: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Low-carbon hydrogen and e-fuels such as green ammonia and e-methanol are made with renewable electricity and electrolysers. Their cost depends on power prices, electrolyser cost and running hours; their value on the fossil fuels and subsidies they compete with.
No public price Low-carbon hydrogen and e-fuels has no public monthly price series: Too young a market for a public price; deals are bespoke offtakes.What its price moves with
Conventional hydrogen made by reforming natural gas is the benchmark that green hydrogen must beat. Grey hydrogen is usually far cheaper, so green projects rely on subsidies, carbon prices or mandates, such as India's Green Hydrogen Mission, to close the gap.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Ammonia is the leading way to ship hydrogen and a direct use for it in fertiliser. Green ammonia competes with ammonia made from gas, so the conventional ammonia price caps what buyers will pay without a green premium.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.E-methanol, made from green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide, is being adopted as a shipping fuel. It must compete with methanol made from gas or coal, which sets the reference price for offtake contracts.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Gas is the feedstock for grey and blue hydrogen, so higher gas prices narrow the cost gap for green hydrogen. The 2022 European gas spike briefly made green hydrogen look competitive in some markets.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Electrolysers are the main capital cost of green hydrogen, so stack prices and how many hours they run each year largely set the cost per kilogram. Cheaper Chinese alkaline units are pushing that cost down.
No public price for electrolysers, so the link is explained in words only.Electricity is the biggest operating cost, so cheap solar or wind power is essential. Projects cluster where solar is cheapest, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat and the Middle East, and add storage or grid power to run more hours.
No public price for solar photovoltaics, so the link is explained in words only.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.