India-GCC Cooperation: Green Hydrogen & Renewable Energy | GHT EP.7



EP.7 – The Global High Tea Series |  India-GCC Cooperation in Green Hydrogen and Renewable Energy

Introduction

The global energy landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, with green hydrogen emerging as a cornerstone of the future energy economy. India and the GCC are at the forefront of this transition, leveraging their abundant renewable resources and strategic positioning to become major players in the green hydrogen revolution, with both pivotal to shaping how the wider transition to green hydrogen and renewables unfolds. India is positioning itself as a global hub for green hydrogen with ambitious plans under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, aiming for 5 million metric tons (MMT) of annual production by 2030, while the GCC, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is making comparably big moves, leveraging abundant solar energy and existing infrastructure to become major green hydrogen exporters. Rather than developing in isolation, these parallel trajectories increasingly point toward a shared opportunity: India’s manufacturing scale and renewable resource base align closely with the GCC’s capital depth and export infrastructure, laying the groundwork for a genuine India-GCC partnership in green hydrogen and renewable energy. This webinar explores how India and the GCC collaborate on green hydrogen and renewable energy, the challenges they face, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

India has set an ambitious target under its National Green Hydrogen Mission, aiming to produce 5 MMT of green hydrogen annually by 2030, alongside an associated addition of 125 GW of renewable energy capacity specifically tied to the mission. This sits within India’s broader national target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030, and the country’s vast solar and wind energy potential provides an ideal foundation for cost-effective green hydrogen production. However, implementation has lagged significantly behind this trajectory: as of February 2026, India had commissioned only around 8,000 tonnes per annum of green hydrogen capacity, roughly 0.16 per cent of the 2030 target, a gap that GCC capital and technology partnerships could help narrow.

Alongside this, the country is prioritising domestic electrolyzer manufacturing and research and development, seeking to reduce reliance on imports and drive down the cost of production over time. The government has further sought to catalyse private sector participation through financial incentives, viability gap funding, and supportive policy frameworks covering the production, storage, and export of green hydrogen. Taken together, these measures are intended to position India as a major global supplier of green hydrogen, particularly as demand rises across Europe and East Asia, markets the GCC is simultaneously courting. However, realising this export ambition will also depend on the development of robust regulatory and certification frameworks capable of verifying the “green” credentials of hydrogen production, a challenge that remains largely unresolved across both India and its prospective GCC trading partners, and one that closer coordination between the two could help address.

A parallel shift is underway in the GCC, where member states, traditionally dependent on oil and gas exports, are investing heavily in renewable energy and green hydrogen as part of a broader effort to diversify their economies. Saudi Arabia’s NEOM or “New Future” project exemplifies the scale of this ambition: backed by an investment of USD 8.4 billion, it aims to produce 600 tons of green hydrogen daily by 2026, making it one of the largest such projects in the world. The UAE has pursued a similarly assertive strategy, developing hydrogen clusters across Abu Dhabi and Dubai with the explicit goal of capturing 25 percent of the global low-carbon hydrogen market, encompassing both blue and green hydrogen by 2030. Qatar and Oman are advancing their own green hydrogen investments as well, drawing on their renewable resource base and leveraging existing LNG infrastructure to expand production capacity.

Collectively, these developments suggest that the GCC is emerging not merely as a market for green hydrogen but as a potential partner to India, one whose capital, infrastructure, and export ambitions could align closely with India’s manufacturing capacity and cost advantages, positioning India-GCC cooperation as a defining feature of the evolving global hydrogen economy. India and the GCC can deepen cooperation in green hydrogen and renewable energy across several key areas such as joint investment in production and export infrastructure, technology transfer and electrolyzer manufacturing partnerships, harmonised certification and regulatory standards, shared shipping and port infrastructure for hydrogen export, and coordinated R&D to bring down production costs on both sides.

Key Takeaways

1. Climate Imperative: Green hydrogen is emerging as the cornerstone of the clean fuel market, driven primarily by the urgency of climate change and the global shift away from fossil fuels.
2. Cost and Transport Challenge: Green hydrogen is not universally cheap, and transporting it directly is expensive, which makes derivatives such as ammonia and ethanol more practical carriers for achieving clean energy goals.
3. Complementary Strengths: India brings manufacturing scale, engineering talent, and a skilled workforce, while the GCC brings cheap solar-driven renewable energy and capital depth, creating a natural fit for joint production and electrolyzer manufacturing.
4. Diversification alongside Dependency: The GCC’s green hydrogen push is funded largely by continued hydrocarbon revenue, reflecting genuine diversification ambition even as the region remains deeply dependent on oil and gas trade.
5. Competition in Global Markets: India and the GCC are also rivals in the international hydrogen market, with India leaning toward Asian buyers such as Japan and the GCC focusing on Western markets like the US and Europe, though this geographic split leaves room for future joint ventures rather than pure competition.
6. Infrastructure and Corridor Development: Meaningful cooperation requires building domestic production infrastructure first and then developing a dedicated India-GCC hydrogen shipping corridor, including identifying which ports can handle large-scale export volumes.
7. Standards and Shared Constraints: Both sides need harmonised certification and carbon-accounting standards for green hydrogen, while also confronting a shared vulnerability in water scarcity, since water is essential for green hydrogen production.
8. Long-Term Value Chain Focus: Sustainable cooperation means treating green hydrogen as an integrated, long-term value-chain investment by identifying reliable buyers and closing gaps in manufacturing, supply, investment, and research rather than focusing on production alone, positioning India and the GCC to jointly lead the Global South’s green hydrogen agenda

Speaker

Dr Anmol Mukhia

Assistant Professor

Department of International Relations

South Asian University, New Delhi

Dr. Anmol Mukhia is an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations, Faculty of International Studies, South Asian University, New Delhi. He holds a PhD in International Relations from Jilin University, China, supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India) and the Chinese Government Scholarship. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Laboratory on World Order Studies and New Regionalism at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) University, Moscow, Russian Federation. He is also a Lead Guest Editor of a Special Issue of Bandung: Journal of Global South (SCOPUS/Q1) on “The Greater Himalayas, ASEAN-in-Indo-Pacific and the Global South: Mountain-Riverine Geopolitics, Cross-Regional Ecologies, and Planetary Epistemologies” (SI). He is the author of Chasing a Blazing Fire in the Himalayas (White Falcon, 2021), Lead Editor of Green Power Politics and Climate Change: The Future of Environmental Politics in the Indo Pacific (Routledge Publication: London, 2026), and Co-Editor of the Navigating Sustainable Energy Transition in South Asia (Springer Publications: Singapore, 2026).

Moderator

Dr Dhritishree Bordalai

Senior Research Associate

International Relations

Centre for Public Policy Research

Dr Dhritishree Bordalai is a Senior Research Associate (International Relations) at the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR), Kochi, India. She holds a PhD from the Centre for European Studies (CES), School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She completed her MPhil in European Studies from SIS, JNU. Dhritishree has completed her Master’s in Politics with Specialisation in International Relations from SIS, JNU. She graduated from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi with History as her key discipline. She has a Certificate in Public Policy and Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K). She has interned at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in New Delhi and was previously working as a Mahatma Gandhi National Fellow under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE, GoI).

Dhritishree has been awarded the UGC-DAAD Short-Term Scholarship during her PhD at the Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft (OSI), Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She has attended several national and international conferences on her area of research and presented a paper at the Young Researchers Conference in JNU. Her core areas of research are migration, security and refugee studies.

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