SECI Cancels Two Hydrogen Hub Tenders — India's Market Structure Is Shifting
SECI cancelled two 100,000 TPA hydrogen hub tenders in mid-2025. India's hydrogen market is pivoting to distributed, end-use aligned projects — GHCI certification demand moves with it.
Key Highlights
- SECI cancelled tenders for two hydrogen hubs (100,000 TPA each) in mid-2025 due to demand and viability challenges
- The market is responding with smaller, targeted tenders aligned to specific industrial end-uses: refineries, steel, chemicals, fertilisers
- 637,400 TPA of expected capacity over 3 years comes from 13 SECI tenders and private projects — not centralised hubs
- For GHCI certification, this structural shift is significant: facility-level per-refinery certification is now the dominant demand pattern
What Happened
India's original hydrogen infrastructure strategy assumed large-scale centralised production in renewable-resource-rich zones — the "hub model." Hydrogen would be produced at scale and distributed to industrial users via pipeline or shipping.
SECI tested this assumption with tenders for two hub-scale projects, each targeting 100,000 TPA. Both were cancelled in mid-2025.
The stated reasons: insufficient binding offtake commitments and viability gaps at the assumed production scale. No industrial buyer was willing to sign long-term hydrogen supply agreements with a centralised hub that had not yet demonstrated reliable delivery.
The Emerging Pattern
Instead of waiting for hubs, India's hydrogen market is structuring around industrial demand pull:
| Hub Model (cancelled) | Distributed Model (emerging) |
|---|---|
| Centralised production in renewable zones | Production co-located with end-use (refineries, steel, chemicals) |
| Expected to serve multiple industries via pipeline | Tailored to specific industrial process requirements |
| Assumed large export demand at launch | Tied to refinery desulfurisation, ammonia synthesis, DRI steel |
| Failed to secure binding offtake | Each project has a single dedicated offtaker |
| 100,000 TPA minimum viable scale | 5,000–20,000 TPA per facility |
Greenzo and Lord's Mark recently announced a 60 MW partnership — typical of this new distributed scale. Numaligarh Refinery ran a 10,000 TPA tender via SECI that attracted competitive bidding from 10 suppliers.
637,400 TPA of expected capacity over the next three years will come from 13 SECI tenders plus private projects — each a discrete, end-use-aligned facility.
Why This Matters for Certification
The hub cancellations change the certification demand pattern fundamentally.
A hub-scale project would have required a single, large-scale GHCI certification — and potentially delayed that requirement until the hub was fully operational and export-ready. Under the distributed model:
- Each refinery or industrial facility needs its own GHCI certification — independently audited, with its own data infrastructure and compliance documentation
- More frequent certification events: As 13+ smaller tenders move toward commissioning, the certification demand is distributed across more projects on faster timelines
- No centralised offtake certainty means each project must independently demonstrate RFNBO or GHCI compliance to access incentives and sell to its specific buyer
The competitive signal from Atmen and CertifHy — both optimised for EU RFNBO hub certification — is that they are not well-positioned for India's distributed refinery-focused deals. GHCI's per-facility audit structure is a better fit for what the market is actually building.
HyGOAT Implications
India's market structure has validated the go-to-market assumption behind facility-level certification tooling. The question is no longer whether large-scale hub certification or small-scale distributed certification is the right business model — SECI's cancellations answered that.
The pipeline: 13+ discrete SECI tenders in the next 36 months, each representing an independent certification customer at the refinery or industrial facility level. Each needs GHCI compliance as a condition of accessing MNRE incentive payments.