However, at least in the EU, that predictability is quickly disappearing. New regulations are transforming fossil fuels into financial liabilities. Two different policy strategies are used: the carrot and the stick. The government uses financial rewards (the carrots) to encourage companies to adopt clean technology, while using financial penalties (the sticks) to make polluting options increasingly expensive.
In the Dutch market, after years of carrots for those picking sustainable fuels, now, the sticks are arriving in full force for those choosing not to do so. This means that doing nothing is quickly becoming a financial risk.
The true cost of doing nothing
The financial pressure on traditional fossil fuels is affecting operations right now, not just in 2030 or 2050
Take the new Dutch truck toll (vrachtwagenheffing), which is scheduled to start on July 1, 2026. For standard diesel transport, every single kilometer driven will cost around 19 cents. Zero-emission alternatives, on the other hand, will receive a significant discount and end up around 3 cents per kilometre. If you operate a fleet of heavy trucks covering long distances every day, this toll alone will add thousands of euros in unavoidable operational expenses to your business every single month.
And this toll is only half the problem. Besides the oil price, there is another driver behind rising fuel costs: a new system called Emission Reduction Units (EREs). This new system officially replaced the old volume-based rules on January 1, 2026 in the Netherlands.
To understand why this makes diesel more expensive, it helps to look at how fuel suppliers operate: the Dutch government legally obligates oil companies to reduce the total carbon footprint of all the fuel they sell each year. Every liter of diesel they sell adds up in their ‘carbon deficit’, forcing them to buy compliance tickets (EREs) to offset that pollution. Under the old system, suppliers could easily bundle cheap, bulk biofuels to clear their volume targets. The new ERE system closes that loophole by measuring exact carbon emissions from source to wheel, making it far more expensive for oil companies to balance out their fossil diesel. To maintain their profit margins, oil companies pass these compliance costs directly down to you, meaning you pay a premium on every liter of diesel at the pump.
What this means for the price of hydrogen
However, when you operate a vehicle or generator set running on green hydrogen, you are doing the exact opposite. Because hydrogen eliminates carbon emissions, every kilogram you use generates these highly valuable ‘ERE compliance tickets’ in the national registry. Because the traditional oil companies need these tickets to offset their diesel sales and dodge government fines, these tickets are worth a lot to them. The hydrogen supplier sells these tickets directly to the oil companies on the market and uses that profit to offer the hydrogen at the pump for a lower price.
This trade is exactly why the price of green hydrogen will drop. While the unsubsidized price of green hydrogen at a refuelling station can range between 10 and 20 euros per kilogram, the market value of those generated carbon tickets acts is an immediate discount, lowering the price at the pump down to around 8 euros per kilogram.
Sticking with diesel means you are indirectly paying the carbon penalties of the oil companies. Switching to high-efficiency fuel cells means you let the market subsidise your fuel costs instead.
Subsidise, or be subsidised
Sticking entirely to diesel might feel like the predictable path, but it does mean that you are betting on a technology that regulations are actively working to penalise. Whether you are moving freight on the highway or running stationary power on a job site, costs are shifting away from hydrogen adopters and being paid by fossil fuel users.
And keep in mind, these are just some of the direct, visible costs. When you factor in broader operational hurdles, such as local emission regulations, the Dutch nitrogen crisis and the severe permitting delays that come with running combustion engines near sensitive zones, standing still becomes even more expensive in lost opportunity costs.
By investing in heavy-duty fuel cell technology, you stop paying the carbon penalties of others and let the market subsidise your fuel costs instead.
