Innovative financing frameworks and policy interventions are essential to bridge the cost gap in green hydrogen production and accelerate India’s transition to a low-carbon economy, say industry stakeholders during SPDA sessions.

The Sustainable Projects Developers Association (SPDA) spearheaded two key sessions at the 3rd International Conference of Green Hydrogen (ICGH) 2025 conference: a panel discussion on the topic “Financing Green Hydrogen: Bridging the Cost Gap” and a roundtable on the topic “India-France Roundtable with Industry CEOs on Green Hydrogen Value Chain”. Both sessions aimed to deliberate and chart a roadmap for the future of the green hydrogen and its derivatives industry in India.

The high-level sessions brought together eminent scientists, industry leaders, global financiers, and lenders to discuss pathways for accelerating investment in green hydrogen. During the ‘Financing Green Hydrogen: Bridging the Cost Gap’ panel discussion, the dialogue focused on understanding cost drivers, identifying advanced financing tools, sharing global best practices, strengthening risk mitigation frameworks, and building robust offtake mechanisms.

The panel discussion was moderated by Dr Ashvini Kumar, Former Managing Director, SECI and the keynote address was given by Joshit Ranjan Sikidar, Director Finance, SECI. The key speakers at the discussion include - Ashok Sharma, Deputy Managing Director, SBI; Sudeep Sural, Senior Executive Vice President – Head of Thematic Research, HDFC Bank; Dr Susana Moreira, Executive Director, H2Global Foundation; Anuj Banga, Head - Structured and Project Finance, India, SMBC; Mudit Parashar, CFO, ACME and Ranjit Gupta, CEO, Ocior Group among others.  

The deliberations at India-France roundtable focused on specific roadmap on green hydrogen, endorsed in October 2022 and aimed to strengthen collaboration on regulatory frameworks, carbon certification, scientific research, and industrial partnerships.

The roundtable featured eminent speakers such as Mahaveer Singhvi, Joint Secretary - New Emerging and Strategic Technologies (NEST) Division, Ministry of External Affairs; Florent Mangin, Minister Counsellor for Economic & Financial Affairs, and Head of the Regional Economic Service, South Asia; Axelle Blanchard, Deputy Head of the Regional Economic Service, South Asia; Elisa Vigato, Energy and Environment Attaché, Regional Economic Service, South Asia; Thierry Advocat, Counsellor, representative of the CEA; Dr Meenakshi Singh, Scientific Coordinator, IFI; Guirec Servan, Chief Executive Officer India, EDF Power Solutions; Rajeev Tiwary, Head of BD & Partnerships - New Business, EDF Power Solutions; Amit Jain, Chief Executive Officer India, ENGIE; Anand Srivastava, Business & Project Developer, HDF Energy; and Laura Gilotte, Economic Attaché, South Asia, among others.

“India has emerged as one of the fastest growing ecosystems for green hydrogen in the past three years since the launch of Green Hydrogen Mission. Technology, skilling and standards will help strengthen the ecosystem for green hydrogen. The kind of projects coming up offer immense potential for replacing fossil fuel import into the country and also facilitate decarbonisation of many sectors,” said Abhay Bakre, Mission Director, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

Dr Sadre Alam, Director, New Emerging and Strategic Technologies?(NEST) Division, Ministry of External Affairs, said, “We should aim that our Green Hydrogen and its derivatives’ production target should be more and more export oriented. Besides, we are confident of increasing our domestic consumption for Green Hydrogen and its derivatives as industries are becoming more competitive in setting up more plants in record time.”

“The future of energy must be clean, secure and equitable and India’s renewable energy journey over the past decade has been transformative. Achieving the vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Viksit Bharat will be “challenging” if we do not bring in a change in the fuel mix in Indian economy,” opined Vineet Mittal, Chairman, Avaada Group, at ICGH. “We have the technology in place and government has proved green fuel could be competitive, now we have to collectively build a model where hard-to-abate sectors and industries can start using it more aggressively and government should support this with mandates like it did in case of wind and solar. Energy transition is not just about technology it is about transforming destinies of nation it is one of the strong pillars of Viksit Bharat,” he added.

While green hydrogen is rapidly gaining prominence as a key pathway for deep decarbonisation in hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, heavy mobility, and chemicals and fertiliser, its commercial uptake remains constrained by a significant cost gap compared to grey hydrogen. 

Ravi Verma, Member, Governing Council, Sustainable Projects Developers Association (SPDA), discussed with his French counterparts, about, how India is aggressively working towards developing the ecosystem for Green Hydrogen and its derivatives such as Green Ammonia and Green Methanol within the country, and invited the French companies to work closely with India.

He also assured his French counterparts by saying that “Indian Government has, from time to time, been addressing the various issues confronting the green hydrogen industry and a lot of policy intervention has been done to promote the sector so as to make it more and more competitive, both for renewable energy as well as for export purposes. There will be a lot of focus on the cost reduction, efficiency, technology localisation.” 

Though India has taken significant strides through the National Green Hydrogen Mission, the high cost of electrolyzers, renewable power, and infrastructure remains a major impediment to commercial viability. Additionally, limited offtake assurance, and underdeveloped transport and storage infrastructure continue to hinder large-scale deployment.