The Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Brazil and India Are Racing to Become the World’s Green Fuel Pump

PORTBIZ

On the same day that India launched its Maritime Energy Gateway in New Delhi, a consortium connecting Brazil’s Port of Açu to Belgium’s Antwerp was advancing the feasibility study that could make South America’s first transatlantic e-fuel corridor a commercial reality. The green energy race has a new geography and ports are at its centre.

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Two announcements separated by 8,000 kilometres of ocean, made within weeks of each other, have revealed the shape of one of the defining commercial competitions of the next decade. On one side of that competition stands Brazil, with its largely renewable electricity grid, its deepwater industrial port complexes, and a consortium of global shipping majors assembling the roadmap for the world’s first transatlantic corridor dedicated to synthetic fuels. On the other stands India, which today unveiled its Maritime Energy Gateway in New Delhi, a comprehensive national mapping of clean fuel corridors, port infrastructure, and green hydrogen projects that positions the subcontinent as a maritime energy exporter of continental ambition.

Both countries are chasing the same prize: the right to supply the green fuels that global shipping, and European industry, will require in the volumes the IMO’s net-zero trajectory demands. Both have credible structural advantages. And neither has yet closed the gap between announced capacity and contracted, financed, delivered production at the scale the market requires.

The race is on. The ports that win it will not merely handle cargo. They will generate it.

Brazil’s Atlantic Bet: Açu to Antwerp

The Port of Açu, located on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state 280 kilometres north of the city, is not a name that appears frequently in mainstream logistics coverage. It should. The port is a privately operated deepwater industrial complex with more than 130 square kilometres of area, deep draught capacity capable of receiving the world’s largest vessels, and a location that places it within competitive sailing distance of both European and West African markets.

In November 2025, RMI and the Global Maritime Forum published a pre-feasibility study identifying Açu as a high-potential e-fuel export hub, underpinned by a straightforward commercial logic: Brazil’s electricity grid is already approximately 85 per cent renewable, dominated by hydroelectric, wind, and solar generation. That renewable base minimises the carbon intensity of water electrolysis, the process by which green hydrogen is produced from water using electricity. Combined with Brazil’s National Hydrogen Program, which provides regulatory and financial support for green hydrogen production, and the relatively low cost of capital and land at a private industrial complex like Açu, the study found that e-fuels produced there could approach cost parity with conventional fuels on the Açu-Antwerp route under supportive European policy conditions.

The pre-feasibility study provided the foundation. In June 2026, the consortium that will convert it into a commercial roadmap was formally constituted. Facilitated by the Global Maritime Forum and RMI, the group brings together the port teams of both Açu and Antwerp-Bruges on either end of the corridor, alongside HIF Global, the e-methanol developer; Fuella, the Norwegian green ammonia project developer already planning a production facility within the Açu complex; NYK Line, one of Japan’s largest shipping companies; Höegh Autoliners; and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, two of the world’s leading vehicle and roll-on/roll-off carriers.

The commercial model the consortium is exploring is deliberately integrated. The e-ammonia and e-methanol produced at Açu would not merely be shipped to Antwerp for industrial or chemical use. The vessels transporting those cargoes across the Atlantic would be powered by the same fuels they are carrying. A self-sustaining transatlantic energy chain, from production to bunkering to combustion, with no conventional fossil fuel in any link of the sequence.

HIF Global has already signed a land reservation contract at Açu for a large-scale e-methanol facility backed by a 1.1 gigawatt electrolyzer capacity, targeting production of up to 700,000 tonnes per year. Fuella’s green ammonia plant at the same site adds a second fuel stream. Norwegian company Yamna has signed a land reservation agreement for a facility targeting one million tonnes per year of renewable ammonia within the Açu complex. The port is not waiting for the corridor study to conclude before attracting production tenants. It is assembling the supply base that the corridor’s economics require.

Eleanor Wells, senior project manager at the Global Maritime Forum, articulated what the consortium is trying to achieve with a directness that belies the complexity of the task: the group is working toward Brazil’s e-fuel production and bunkering opportunity while simultaneously supporting the growing demand for e-fuels in Europe. The feasibility analysis that will define infrastructure requirements, vessel specifications, and the commercial framework for the corridor is expected to be published before the end of 2026. The consortium has been meeting regularly throughout the second half of the year to advance the roadmap.

If successful, the Açu-Antwerp corridor would be among the first transatlantic routes in history dedicated entirely to the transport of zero or near-zero emission synthetic fuels, with the maritime transport itself operating on those same fuels. That would be, in structural terms, a genuinely new kind of trade route.

Brazil’s Wider Green Port Architecture

Açu is not alone. Brazil’s e-fuel production geography is taking shape across multiple port complexes, and the competitive positioning of each reflects a different combination of renewable energy access, regulatory framework, and export market proximity.

The Port of Pecém in Ceará, on Brazil’s northeastern coast, is the most advanced in terms of committed international investment. Fortescue, the Australian mining and green energy group led by Andrew Forrest, has signed agreements potentially worth up to $18 billion, with a final investment decision expected in 2026 and production targeted by the end of 2027. Six other companies have signed pre-contracts at Pecém. The complex has signed green hydrogen corridor memoranda of understanding with the Port of Rotterdam, duisport in Duisburg, and the Port of Rostock in Germany, extending direct supply corridor commitments to Northwest Europe and the Baltic. In October 2025, the state of Ceará and North Rhine-Westphalia signed an energy and industrial cooperation agreement at the H2 LATAM Summit in Fortaleza. The ZPE Ceará free trade zone was recognised by the Financial Times’ fDi Intelligence as the best free trade zone in the world in 2025.

The Port of Suape in Pernambuco is a third node in the emerging green production network. European Energy, a Danish renewable developer, has signed an agreement with the state government of Pernambuco for a 100,000 tonne per year e-methanol production plant at the Suape industrial complex, representing an investment of approximately $344 million, with operations projected for the second quarter of 2028.

Brazil’s Ministry of Ports and Airports highlighted Açu in May 2026 as a central element of the national strategy for green corridors and low-carbon fuels from 2030 onwards. The policy framing that has emerged in 2026 treats port-based e-fuel hubs not as peripheral energy infrastructure but as the foundation of a new export economy, one that complements, and in the long term may substantially diversify, Brazil’s traditional commodity export base in iron ore, soybeans, and crude oil.

Brazil’s structural competitive advantages are, by any honest assessment, exceptional. A grid that is already 85 per cent renewable means that the carbon intensity of electrolysis-based hydrogen production is among the lowest in the world without any additional infrastructure investment. Abundant freshwater resources, necessary for electrolysis at scale, are available in the regions where production is being planned. Biogenic carbon dioxide, needed for e-methanol synthesis, is available from the agricultural and forestry sectors in quantities that no European or East Asian competitor can match domestically. And the Atlantic geography places Brazilian ports closer to European demand centres than Gulf, Australian, or East Asian production hubs on comparable fuel routes.

India’s Answer: The Maritime Energy Gateway

On the other side of the equation, and on the other side of the globe, India moved this week to formalise its own maritime energy ambitions with a level of institutional organisation that signals the competition is moving beyond the announcement phase.

On September 26, S&P Global Energy launched the India Maritime Energy Gateway at the Horizons Clean Energy Expansion India 2026 conference in New Delhi. The document, introduced by Shri Venkatesapathy S., Joint Secretary for Shipping at the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, brings together port-level trade data, clean fuel projects, fleet and shipbuilding activity, and emerging green hydrogen corridors into a single national mapping. The framing is explicitly commercial: the gateway is designed to move India’s hydrogen ambitions from policy aspiration toward execution, bankability, infrastructure readiness, and demand creation.

The sectoral ambition behind the gateway is substantial. Under India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission, the country is targeting five million tonnes of annual green hydrogen production by 2030. Three ports have been designated as dedicated production, storage, bunkering, and export hubs: Deendayal Port at Kandla in Gujarat; Paradip Port in Odisha; and V.O. Chidambaranar Port at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu. More than 12 million metric tonnes per year of green hydrogen-based e-fuel capacity has already been announced nationally across these and adjacent industrial zones.

At VOC Port in Tuticorin, the development trajectory illustrates what the Indian model looks like in practice. The port allocated 205.72 acres for green hydrogen and ammonia projects in 2025, developed a green methanol bunkering facility with two tanks totalling 1,500 cubic metres of capacity, and commissioned a port-based green hydrogen pilot in September 2025, a 250 million rupee, 10 normal cubic metre per hour facility supplying hydrogen for port operations. Between April 2025 and January 2026, cargo handling at VOC increased six per cent to 35.97 million tonnes, with container volumes rising 9.4 per cent. The Ministry of Ports inaugurated projects worth over 15 billion rupees at Tuticorin in February 2026, covering rail and road connectivity, renewable energy integration combining solar, wind, battery storage and green hydrogen production, and digital infrastructure.

RMI’s analysis of India’s green shipping corridor potential, published in May 2026, found that the three designated hydrogen hub ports anchor a production base capable of supplying the maritime sector’s early commercial demand for green fuels at scale. The same organisation that facilitated the Açu-Antwerp pre-feasibility study is now identifying the institutional framework and corridor design principles that would allow Indian ports to serve similar demand in European and East Asian markets.

The Same Market, Different Strengths

The convergence of Brazil’s Açu-Antwerp corridor and India’s Maritime Energy Gateway onto the same strategic objective: supplying green e-fuels to European shipping and industry,  makes the competitive comparison not merely interesting but commercially relevant.

Both countries have genuine and distinct advantages. Brazil’s electricity grid is already predominantly renewable, giving it a structural cost advantage in electrolysis that India, with a grid still heavily dependent on coal, cannot yet match without significant additional investment in dedicated renewable capacity for hydrogen production. Brazil’s biogenic carbon access for e-methanol production is unmatched globally. And Brazil’s Atlantic geography makes it the closest large-scale potential e-fuel supplier to European demand, a proximity that carries real commercial weight when fuel logistics costs are part of the delivered price calculation.

India’s advantages are different in kind. Its scale of political commitment with a National Green Hydrogen Mission backed by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and formalised through dedicated infrastructure designations at major public ports,  reflects a level of sovereign institutional coordination that Brazil’s private-led model at Açu and Pecém does not yet fully replicate. India’s established position as a major shipbuilding nation means its ports are also developing green bunkering infrastructure in parallel with domestic vessel construction for alternative fuel propulsion, creating an integrated domestic value chain that Brazilian shipbuilding cannot currently offer. India’s proximity to East Asian markets: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, gives it a geographic advantage on Pacific-facing corridors that Brazilian ports cannot compete with.

The European market, which represents the most immediate and best-regulated demand for green e-fuels through the EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime, and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, is the primary commercial battleground. On that specific route, Brazil holds structural advantages that are difficult to replicate without decades of grid transformation. The Açu-Antwerp corridor’s feasibility study, due before year-end 2026, will put commercial numbers to those advantages for the first time in a form that project financiers can evaluate.

The Feasibility Wall and How to Break Through It

The phrase that the Açu-Antwerp consortium has used to describe the central challenge: the economic feasibility wall, is an accurate description of where the green shipping corridor concept stands in September 2026.

Green e-fuels are more expensive to produce than the conventional marine fuels they would replace. The cost gap is closing as electrolyzer costs fall, as renewable electricity generation scales and cheapens, and as regulatory carbon pricing increases the cost of conventional fuels. But it has not yet closed. The shipping corridor model is one of the mechanisms the industry is using to try to bridge that gap: by aggregating demand from multiple carriers on a single route, committing production off-take in advance, and integrating the full value chain under a single governance structure, the consortium model attempts to create the commercial certainty that individual bilateral contracts between a fuel producer and a single carrier cannot provide.

The Açu-Antwerp consortium is explicitly designed to overcome this feasibility wall through integration. HIF Global and Fuella provide the production anchor. NYK Line, Höegh Autoliners, and Wallenius Wilhelmsen provide the maritime demand. Antwerp-Bruges provides the European receiving infrastructure. Açu provides the production site, deepwater logistics, and export gateway. The Global Maritime Forum and RMI provide the neutral convening function and the analytical rigour. Each element depends on the others, which is why the commercial roadmap the consortium is preparing carries more weight than any individual feasibility study for a single component of the chain.

India’s Maritime Energy Gateway, launched today, serves a structurally similar purpose at the national scale: it maps the interdependencies between port infrastructure, clean fuel production, maritime demand, and export corridors in a way that allows investors, governments, and shipping companies to see the integrated opportunity rather than isolated project components.

Both approaches acknowledge the same fundamental truth about the green energy transition in maritime logistics: no single actor can make it happen alone. The production economics, the infrastructure investment, the vessel specification, and the regulatory framework must advance in coordination, or none of them advances at all.

What This Means for the Future of Port Competition

The emergence of green e-fuel production as a core function of major port complexes represents a structural shift in what port competition means. For most of the container shipping era, ports competed primarily on throughput efficiency, hinterland connectivity, berth availability, and cost per box. The port that moved the most cargo, fastest and cheapest, won.

The green energy transition is adding a second dimension to that competition. Ports that can offer production, storage, and bunkering of zero-emission fuels, within the same complex where cargo arrives and departs, are acquiring a commercial function that has no precedent in port history. They are not merely handling the trade in goods. They are generating the energy that makes the trade possible.

Jebel Ali became one of the world’s most important commercial complexes not merely because it moved containers efficiently, but because it built an ecosystem of industrial and logistics tenants that generated their own cargo flows. The green corridor model that Açu and Pecém are developing, and that India’s designated hydrogen hub ports are advancing, follows the same logic at a larger scale and with a more complex value chain: produce the fuel, attract the vessels that use it, develop the tenants whose supply chains depend on both.

Whether Brazil’s Atlantic gateway or India’s subcontinent network emerges as the dominant supplier of green maritime fuels to European and Asian markets will depend on investment decisions, regulatory alignment, project execution, and commercial agreements that have not yet been made. The feasibility analysis for the Açu-Antwerp corridor is still being written. India’s Maritime Energy Gateway was launched this morning.

The race is real. The ports that will define the next era of maritime trade are not necessarily the ones moving the most containers today. They may be the ones producing the fuel that every container ship in the world will eventually need to run on.

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