Green hydrogen is often referred to as the ‘fuel of the future’, but its role in transforming our energy systems goes beyond replacing fossil fuels. For both the UK and India, green hydrogen represents an opportunity to address some of the most pressing energy challenges of our time – decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors, supporting energy affordability, accessibility and resilience, and reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels. Both the potential and ambition are vast: India’s hydrogen market is projected to reach $8 billion by 2030 and $340 billion by 2050, while the UK aims to produce 10 GW of low-carbon hydrogen by 2030.
Though there is promise, challenges remain. The recent India Global Forum session ‘Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Innovation in the UK-India Partnership’, brought together key voices from finance, innovation, and industry to discuss the real-world barriers, including a question ITES regularly poses: what is needed to unleash the potential of clean hydrogen innovation? Despite the varied sectors represented in the room, there was clear consensus in key areas.
Bankability is a fundamental issue that must be addressed to attract the level of private investment needed to scale hydrogen production and infrastructure. During the IGF session, there was unanimous agreement that guaranteed offtakes, subsidies, credits, and government procurement are critical to making hydrogen projects viable for investors. Without mechanisms to de-risk finance, the financial barriers to scaling hydrogen projects remain too high, especially for early-stage innovations.
Standardisation plays a pivotal role. The UK has made strides in establishing a Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard, which serves as a valuable framework that India can adapt to its own context. Could harmonising standards between the UK and India facilitate cross-border hydrogen projects, enhance investor confidence, and pave the way for bilateral market growth?
Unlocking hydrogen’s potential will require collaboration on multiple fronts between governments, industries, and innovators. This extends to the transfer of technology and talent between the UK and India. By leveraging each country’s unique strengths – including the UK’s innovation experience, and India’s renewable energy scale – there is opportunity to build a collaborative hydrogen economy that benefits both nations.
The importance of market demand – driven by industrial and public sector uptake – cannot be overstated. Creating market pull for green hydrogen is vital to underpinning the entire value chain. Both the UK and India are working to create a conducive policy environment that encourages uptake across sectors like transportation, industry, and power generation.
A key takeaway: hydrogen innovation cannot happen in silos. It requires a whole-systems approach – one that both ITES and Energy Systems Catapult have long championed. Exploring the interdependencies of technology, finance, regulation, consumer acceptance, and market mechanisms is vital to creating an environment where energy innovations can thrive, and real-world transition can be realised.
Supporting bilateral hydrogen innovation ITES is addressing these challenges through the power of cross-sector, cross-border collaboration. Part of the UK-India Science and Innovation Partnership, ITES leverages the combined muscle of government, industry, research and innovation to turbocharge clean energy and transport solutions in the UK and India, with green hydrogen a major priority.
- Unrivalled innovation access for the Indian market: ITES backs some of the UK’s best hydrogen innovators, whose high-potential solutions – such as new electrolyser technologies – could reduce the cost of India’s green hydrogen production. ITES’s industry/innovator partnerships and in-country pilots can help industry and government take new tech from concept to commercialisation to further support India’s green hydrogen economy.
- Hydrogen Hub: Our partnership with the Net Zero Innovation Virtual Centre’s UK-India Green Hydrogen Hub brings together the UK and India to tackle shared challenges. Bridging academic insights and industry needs, the Hub accelerates the deployment of hydrogen solutions that meet local requirements and draw on international best practices.
- In collaboration with Xynteo’s Energy Leap programme, ITES is creating an environment where UK and Indian innovators can exchange ideas, access funding, and accelerate lab-to-market timelines. The programme focuses on commercialising hydrogen innovations and building the capabilities necessary for these solutions to thrive in complex markets like India.
- Knowledge sharing: The ITES Knowledge Series, in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), brings together industry leaders, policymakers, and researchers from both countries to share learnings, spotlight emerging opportunities and target challenges in clean energy and transport, ensuring that broader innovation communities – including those exploring clean hydrogen – can benefit from collective insights.
The path forward
Fully integrating clean hydrogen into our energy systems is complex, requiring new technologies, supportive regulatory frameworks, financial incentives, and market-building efforts. This complexity demands a whole-systems approach and united efforts – a perspective shared and embraced by ITES. We are seeing firsthand how fostering collaboration between industry, investors, academia, and government, and targeted innovation support, can help the UK and India move further and faster towards their clean energy – and hydrogen – ambitions.
Sessions like those facilitated by the India Global Forum are vital to enable the dialogue we need, bridging gaps between stakeholders and bringing ambitious ideas to fruition. We welcome such discussions, that pave the way for practical solutions to the complex global challenges we face. As we look to the future, it is clear that the clean hydrogen journey will be a shared one.
You can find more information about IGF events here.
If you have perspectives on UK-India hydrogen collaboration, and what is needed to accelerate progress, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at info@ites.org.uk.
Andrew Stokes leads the UK-India clean energy and transport accelerator, ITES, and is Business Leader – International at Energy Systems Catapult. This blog was originally posted on the India Global Forum website here.