APAC Green Hydrogen Alliance Meeting 2026: Connecting the dots on green iron, hydrogen and shipping in Asia Pacific

For the past three and a half years, GH2 has convened the APAC Green Hydrogen Alliance Meeting as a regular check of where the region’s green hydrogen market is heading. 

This year’s meeting, held on 14 September, brought together three speakers to share lessons from the emerging green iron and shipping markets: 

• Andrew Fang, VP Projects and Sustainability, Meranti Green Steel, on financing a first-of-a-kind green iron project in Oman  

• Dr Yan Zhang, Senior Research Fellow, Cambridge China Development Trust (University of Cambridge), on China’s industrial decarbonisation and its emerging green iron economy  

• Matthew Garland, Senior Project Manager, Green Shipping, Fortescue, on green shipping readiness and geopolitical resilience  

Asia Pacific brings together many of the conditions needed to scale green hydrogen in heavy industry: major iron ore producers, vast renewable resources and some of the busiest shipping routes. These are also the sectors where green hydrogen can do the most useful work, particularly where direct electrification is not enough. The question is how to connect renewable energy, industrial demand and shipping so that projects can actually move forward. 

Iron and steel could give green hydrogen the demand it needs 

Demand remains a major bottleneck for the green hydrogen sector. Andrew Fang brought the perspective of a developer working through what it takes to get an early green iron project off the ground. Without going into the commercial detail of Meranti’s work, his presentation highlighted that hydrogen producers need credible customers, and green iron producers need buyers for the product they make.

That is what makes green iron so important for hydrogen. Ironmaking can provide large, steady demand over many years, giving producers a much stronger basis for investing in new green hydrogen production and infrastructure. Yet demand for green iron and steel also must grow, whether through public procurement, carbon pricing, credible standards or other measures that reward cleaner production. 


Where should the iron be made? 

Hydrogen-based ironmaking needs large amounts of renewable electricity, which changes the economics of where production takes place. Dr Yan Zhang showed how this is already playing out in China, where much of the country’s steelmaking capacity is concentrated in established industrial regions, often far from its best renewable resources. 

This raises an important question about whether hydrogen should be transported to existing steel plants, or whether more ironmaking should move closer to low-cost renewable power, with the iron transported instead. And there is no single answer. Power prices, infrastructure, access to iron ore and the location of the final market will all matter, but moving hydrogen over long distances can be difficult and expensive. In some cases, it may make more sense to use hydrogen close to where it is produced and move the iron instead. 

Avoiding fossil lock-in 

Where new capacity is built matters, but so does when investment decisions are made. 

Dr Yan Zhang drew an important distinction between China and India. China has a large existing blast furnace fleet, with many plants approaching decisions on refurbishment or relining. Extending the life of an existing furnace can make financial sense for a steelmaker, but it can also keep the same high-carbon asset operating for another decade or more. India is in a different position. Steel demand is still growing and significant new capacity is yet to come, putting today’s production choices under greater scrutiny.

This also raises the risk of stranded assets. New fossil-based facilities could lock producers into high-emission production for decades and, without a clear decarbonisation pathway, may also lose competitiveness as policies such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism increase the cost of carbon-intensive production.
 

And then there is shipping

Fortescue moves around 200 million tonnes of iron ore each year, much of it between Western Australia and China. If more iron is produced in places with abundant renewable energy, maritime trade will remain central to connecting production with demand. 

Matthew Garland put a simple question to the meeting: if the commercial case for green shipping arrived tomorrow, would the industry actually be ready? Not yet. 

Green ammonia supply is only one part of the equation. Ships need to be able to use the fuel, ports need to bunker it safely, crews need training, and safety procedures need testing. None of this can be put in place immediately, which is why waiting for perfect cost parity carries its own risk. Fortescue’s experience with the Green Pioneer, and now with ammonia-powered vessels and bunkering, shows the value of doing things in practice. Trials help answer uncertainties around safety, operations and infrastructure that are difficult to solve on paper and give regulators, ports and operators a better idea of what needs to come next. 

The same applies to green iron. Early projects do not need to solve everything, but they can make the next project easier.