Indian Companies Had Signed 23 Green Hydrogen Supply Contracts Covering 5,55,610 Tonnes a Year by October 2026, With More Than 70 Per Cent Earmarked for Export

Indian companies had signed 23 contracts to supply green hydrogen and its derivatives by October 2026, covering 5,55,610 tonnes a year in hydrogen equivalent, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) said on 29 October 2026. Eighteen of the 23 were signed in 2026 and together cover more than 4 lakh tonnes a year, and more than 70 per cent of the total is earmarked for export. The ministry calls this the world’s largest green hydrogen offtake order book. An offtake agreement is a purchase contract: a buyer commits to take a fixed quantity over a set number of years, which lets the seller raise money to build the plant.

What the ministry counted

The figures come from an MNRE release of 29 October 2026, carried the same day by Business Standard and ANI. It says the contracts would need aggregate investment of more than Rs 90,000 crore (about US$ 9.5 billion). It also says the 5,55,610 tonnes equal about 11 per cent of the National Green Hydrogen Mission’s target of at least 5 million tonnes a year by 2030 (5,55,610 of 50,00,000 is 11.1 per cent).

The Union Cabinet approved that mission on 4 January 2023 with an initial outlay of Rs 19,744 crore, and the ministry’s release repeats the mission’s other 2030 outcomes: about 125 GW of new renewable capacity, over Rs 8 lakh crore of investment and over 6 lakh jobs. The mission’s design and tender results are in our explainer on the National Green Hydrogen Mission. The ministry also says Indian suppliers are offering the most competitive prices in the world for green ammonia and green methanol in European and Japanese markets. That is the ministry’s statement, and the release gives no price table to test it against.

Why the total is in hydrogen equivalent

Most of these contracts are for ammonia (a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen used in fertiliser and now tested as a ship fuel) or methanol, not for hydrogen gas. “Hydrogen equivalent” means the amount of hydrogen that goes into making the ammonia or methanol sold.

The release lists individual contracts in tonnes of ammonia or methanol and gives the 5,55,610 total in hydrogen equivalent. It does not publish the conversion or a contract-by-contract table. The listed tonnages therefore cannot be added up to reach the total: the ACME and IHI line alone is 4,88,000 tonnes of ammonia, close to the whole hydrogen-equivalent figure, and the two are counted in different units.

Five contracts, set against the companies’ own releases

The ministry’s release names nine contracts with buyers abroad or in shipping and two domestic SIGHT lines. For five of them there is a company release or an auction announcement to read beside the ministry’s wording.

Reliance and Samsung C&T. Reliance’s release of 16 March 2026 describes a binding supply and purchase agreement with Samsung C&T of South Korea for green ammonia over 15 years, valued at more than US$ 3 billion, with supply starting in the second half of FY2029. Indian financial years run April to March, so that half is October 2028 to March 2029. The ministry’s release says deliveries are expected to begin by 2028. The ammonia is to come from Reliance’s integrated site at Jamnagar in Gujarat, and the company calls the deal the first in a series of long-term offtake partnerships for its new energy business. The Ammonia Energy Association reports the same terms.

AM Green and Germany. On 30 September 2026 Hintco, which runs the H2Global auctions (this one funded by the German government), named AM Green the sole winner of the Asian lot. Hintco will buy ammonia for a minimum value of EUR 585 million over 10 years. It is to be made at the Kakinada project (phase 2) in Andhra Pradesh, where AM Green is converting an existing gas-based ammonia and urea complex to run on electrolysis, and shipped from Kakinada Seaports. Hintco’s release gives 2029 for first deliveries. Hintco adds that it may buy more than the minimum with proceeds from reselling the ammonia in Europe.

AM Green’s separate deal with the German utility Uniper was announced in January 2026. The trade reports of it, in Hydrocarbon Engineering and pv magazine India, say Uniper will take up to 500,000 tonnes a year from AM Green’s projects, with a first shipment as early as 2028. The ministry’s list gives 2,50,000 tonnes a year for the same deal. Uniper’s own page would not load for us, and neither report explains the difference.

ACME and IHI. ACME’s release of 30 June 2026 describes a 405,000 tonne a year joint venture with Japan’s IHI at Gopalpur, Odisha, due to be commissioned by July 2030. Japan’s trade ministry has certified 228,000 tonnes a year of it for price-gap support (a subsidy that covers the difference between green and conventional ammonia) for 25 years from September 2030, and another 177,000 tonnes a year is earmarked under Japan’s long-term decarbonised power auction. The release adds that 83,000 tonnes a year of ACME’s 800,000 tonne Paradip project, due by 2029, has been awarded in the same power auction. The ministry lists 4,88,000 tonnes with IHI. That equals 405,000 plus 83,000, though neither release says the figure is built that way.

L&T and ITOCHU. L&T Energy GreenTech’s release of 22 April 2026 describes a long-term take-or-pay agreement (the buyer pays whether or not it collects) to supply ITOCHU of Japan with 300,000 tonnes a year of green ammonia from a proposed plant at Kandla, Gujarat. ITOCHU plans to use it for ship refuelling, called bunkering, in Singapore and elsewhere. The L&T release gives no start date. The ministry’s release says deliveries are expected from December 2029.

Three more entries in the ministry’s list rest on thinner public record. Agastya’s 2,50,000 tonne methanol deal with Sri Lanka’s SAR Group is worded in the release as “in the process of offtake”; Ship & Bunker reported on 4 June 2026 that Agastya said it had signed. The JERA head of agreement for 70,000 tonnes and the Jouno Joules contract with Select Energy of Germany (600 tonnes a day, about 2,19,000 a year) appear in the ministry’s list, and we found no company release for either.

The home market: fertiliser plants and refineries

The release says agreements are signed to supply 6,70,000 tonnes a year of green ammonia to 11 fertiliser units under the mission’s SIGHT programme (Strategic Interventions for Green Hydrogen Transition). It also says projects are awarded to supply 30,000 tonnes a year of green hydrogen to refineries of Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and Numaligarh. It does not say whether these volumes sit inside the 5,55,610 total.

SECI, the central agency that runs the tenders, lists 13 green ammonia auctions held between 29 July and 29 August 2025. The lots add up to 7,24,000 tonnes a year, the size of the tender, and the discovered prices run from Rs 49.75 a kilogram (IFFCO’s Paradip plant, supplied by ACME) to Rs 64.74 (Indorama’s Haldia plant). The agreements run 10 years, with a production incentive of Rs 8.82 a kilogram in the first year, falling to Rs 5.30 in the third. For the refineries, a Rajya Sabha reply of 25 March 2026 gave bid prices of Rs 397 a kilogram for Indian Oil and Rs 387 for Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum, both including 18 per cent GST.

How the world compares

The ministry’s ranking is its own. The nearest independent figures we found are from the International Energy Agency’s Global Hydrogen Review 2025, which counts new offtake agreements for low-emissions hydrogen worldwide at 2.4 million tonnes a year in 2023 and 1.7 million in 2024, on its own definitions and for earlier years than the ministry’s. We found no published 2026 global tally to check the “largest” claim against. The same IEA summary says India, with a focus on refining and fertilisers, is one of the countries that has started ambitious programmes to create demand, and that low-emissions hydrogen was still under 1 per cent of global hydrogen production, with total demand near 100 million tonnes in 2024.

From signed contract to running plant

A Rajya Sabha reply of 25 March 2026 put commissioned green hydrogen capacity at around 8,000 tonnes a year till February 2026. ACME’s release says it already runs a green ammonia plant at Bikaner, and AM Green’s 1 million tonne a year Kakinada plant reached final investment decision in 2024 and is under construction, according to pv magazine India. The delivery dates in the contracts above run from as early as 2028 to September 2030, so most of the volume depends on plants still being built.

The power for them is a separate build. The mission’s own outcomes include 125 GW of new renewable capacity, and India’s renewable base stood at about 299 GW on 30 September 2026, as the renewable capacity count shows. Domestic uses are also starting: the Jind to Sonipat train runs on hydrogen.

As of 6 November 2026 the ministry’s 29 October release is the latest total we found. Hintco has said it will publish the full results of its H2Global tenders, including the Asian lot, before the end of 2026.