The clean industrial transition is revealing a difficult reality. Building supply can be easier than creating the market to support it. A commercial-scale clean project can have the renewable power, technology and an experienced developer behind it and still struggle to reach a final investment decision, when the demand for the clean commodity is uncertain. The global clean hydrogen market demonstrates this challenge most clearly. According to the IEA, production grew 20% in 2025 to almost one million metric tonnes, yet only a fifth of new offtake agreements were firm commitments; and of the 27 million metric tonnes of production announced for 2030, just over 6 million metric tonnes is backed by committed demand.
The answer should go beyond just increasing capacity to developing the commercial environment around it. Scaling from tens to hundreds of financed clean plants each year depends on interconnected levers: dependable demand, abundant renewable energy, coordinated supply chains, clean trade flows, catalytic capital and community buy-in; with interventions that embed demand for clean commodities likely to play a dominant role in shaping India’s clean industry transition. With COP31 approaching, the conversation needs to move from project announcements to the commercial arrangements that determine which projects actually get built.
India has an unusually strong position in the emerging market for clean industrial commodities, built on large, low-cost renewable energy and an industrial base in fertilisers, chemicals, refining and steel. Green hydrogen can enter these existing value chains, while ammonia and methanol can connect Indian production to international markets in fertilisers, chemicals and shipping. The Global Project Tracker of Mission Possible Partnership already tracks more than 65 Indian clean industrial projects worth $ 150 billion, making it the world’s third-largest pipeline by count after US and China.
India is already a highly competitive supplier of clean energy. Its next step is to export the industrial products made from that energy to Europe and East Asia, where nascent demand for lower-emissions products is growing. Turning India’s pipeline into plants will depend on securing those buyers.
The location of emerging clean commodity markets makes cross-border market mechanisms and integrated value-chains vital.
A shipment of green ammonia could begin with renewable powered electrolyser and ammonia plant, get transported to a port in India, shipped to a port in Europe and arrive at a fertiliser manufacturing plant. The investment decisions along this chain are interdependent, even if the firms making them are independent of one another.
India’s early links with Europe and East Asia show what these value-chains look like in practice. AM Green’s Kakinada project has an agreement with Germany’s Uniper for up to 500,000 tonnes a year of renewable ammonia. ACME will supply 100,000 tonnes a year of green methanol from Odisha to Japan’s Mitsubishi Gas Chemical. In each case, a developer, a committed buyer, a port and a support mechanism came together to structure cross-border partnerships that address risks across the value-chain.
However, this interdependence is also where projects stall. The IEA expects 40% or more of low-emissions hydrogen volumes planned for 2030 to be traded, yet less than 8% of this volume is operational, under construction or backed by committed funding.
Addressing investment risks effectively requires looking at the value chain as a whole: From upstream feedstock such as renewable power, hydrogen and biogenic CO₂, to mid-stream transport and downstream procurement by food, fertiliser and consumer-goods companies. Early involvement of the buyer is crucial as their preferences on product specifications, scheduling and certification can shape a plant’s economics; and the volume, duration and quality of the offtake will determine the financier’s assessment of project’s creditworthiness, the port’s investment in shared infrastructure, and the producer’s planning for the facility.
Coordinating these actors through green market-mechanisms can reduce risks that would otherwise sit separately on each participant’s balance sheet.
Public-backed market mechanisms that can help build integrated value chains by aggregating demand, discovering competitive prices, bridging the cost gap between producers and buyers, enabling long-term contracting and mitigating the counter-party risk. H2Global’s Hintco double-sided auctions, EU’s Hydrogen Mechanisms to match buyers with suppliers; Japan’s contracts for difference to underwrite imports and India’s SECI-led tenders are examples of such mechanisms.
SECI’s role as India’s green market-maker is pivotal. Under the SIGHT scheme, it aggregated demand from 11 fertiliser plants and contracted 670,000 metric tonnes a year of green ammonia in 2025 at about ₹53 per kilogram, and launched a further 54,000 metric tonnes a year tender in September 2026. Such procurement is more than volume acquisition: it enables price discovery, standard contracts and institutional capacity. SECI is now looking to extend this role beyond domestic markets. Building on its H2Global partnership, it is working on the joint tender model with Germany, with the Netherlands and Japan expected to follow, linking India’s cost-competitive supply with premium buyers.
The same approach is now being extended to green methanol. SECI has issued a draft tender for 500,000 metric tonnes a year under the SIGHT programme. Producers would sign 10-year purchase agreements with SECI, which would sell on to end procurers through back-to-back agreements. Shipping and chemicals are natural early users, and a firm domestic anchor can give export buyers the confidence to commit.
Supply would also need to be transported and aggregated. SECI is therefore exploring a dedicated but common-user green fuel facility at an Indian port, developed with the port authorities. Storage, blending and bunkering infrastructure would be built once and shared by green fuel producers and consumers, much as solar parks share land and transmission. This lowers the entry cost for smaller producers, gives the port visible volumes and gives buyers one reliable point of delivery.
Domestic compliance carbon markets can add to this demand. Under India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, aluminium, cement, chlor-alkali, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, petrochemicals and textiles now have notified greenhouse gas emission intensity targets, and more sectors are expected to follow. An entity that replaces fossil hydrogen or fuel with green hydrogen or its derivatives can lower its emissions intensity and thereby meet its mandatory carbon intensity reduction obligations.
A kilogram of hydrogen certified as green in India is not automatically recognised as green in Europe or Japan. Each market sets its own rules for what counts as clean, so a producer serving several buyers may have to certify the same molecule several times. Aligning India’s certification with the standards of its trading partners, and working towards mutual recognition, would let clean molecules and materials cross borders and be counted as clean wherever they are consumed.
Governments could also negotiate clean trade partnerships directly, possibly within broader trade agreements. The India-EU free trade agreement, due to be signed by the end of 2026, offers a natural framework for clean-commodity provisions on certification, joint procurement and port infrastructure.
COP31 can give impetus to this agenda without being a measure of success itself. Three steps would help. First, importing and exporting governments could back dedicated trade corridors with firm demand signals and through joint auctions with clear volumes and timelines. Second, they can embed clean trade into broader trade agreements, starting with mutual recognition of standards and certification. Third, market mechanisms complemented by common-user facilities could bring feedstock suppliers, ports, financiers and end buyers to the table, as the project is being prepared for FID.
Once such mechanisms prove genuine demand, viable contracts, appropriate infrastructure and established standards, it can pave the way for the next. For India, it is a chance to turn renewable-energy strength into a broader role in global clean manufacturing and trade.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by James Schofield, managing director, Industrial Transition Accelerator, and Akash Tripathi, managing director, Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited.
