Introduction: Hydrogen MENA Summit 2025 and GCC’s Participation
The Hydrogen MENA Summit 2025, held on April 23–24 at TIME Grand Plaza Hotel, Dubai, brought together over 300 senior leaders from government, energy, infrastructure, industry, and technology sectors to discuss the critical opportunities and challenges shaping the future of hydrogen. With 30+ expert speakers and wide regional and global representation, the Summit reinforced MENA’s growing position as a hydrogen powerhouse.
The Global Carbon Council (GCC) contributed at this premier event. Hemant Nandanpawar, Senior Director – Climate Finance & Stakeholder Management at GCC, delivered a keynote presentation titled “Global Carbon Council – Carbon Finance Opportunity for Hydrogen Projects,” outlining how carbon finance is pivotal to scaling hydrogen deployment and achieving global climate goals.
Hydrogen’s Central Role in Achieving Net-Zero
Hydrogen stands at the core of the global transition to net-zero emissions.
Clean hydrogen—both renewable and low-carbon—has the potential to:
- Contribute up to 20% of the global CO₂ abatement required by 2050
- Avoid 80 gigatons of CO₂ emissions between now and 2050
- Help to Decarbonize critical sectors like refining, steel, ammonia, aviation, maritime transport, and heavy industry
- Provide clean alternatives for power generation, industrial heating, and mobility
Scaling clean hydrogen will be essential in meeting the Paris Agreement’s targets. However, achieving cost competitiveness and mobilizing investment at scale remain major challenges—this is where carbon finance and support mechanisms like those offered by GCC become crucial.
What is the Global Carbon Council (GCC)?
GCC is an internationally recognized carbon crediting program, serving the Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) and compliance markets like CORSIA (for aviation) and Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.
Key roles of GCC include:
- Certifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction projects
- Issuing high-integrity carbon credits that meet the strictest international standards
- Ensuring environmental and social safeguards through “No Net Harm” assessments
- Supporting contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Providing pathways for corporates, governments, and project developers to meet their net-zero commitments
- Support countries to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) through the use of appropriate correspondingly adjusted (CA) carbon credits
GCC operates through a rigorous, multi-level review system involving over 25 independent experts for each project, ensuring the highest levels of quality, transparency, and credibility.
How GCC Supports Hydrogen Projects
For hydrogen projects, GCC is developing a new methodology and a structured framework to:
- Certify emission reductions from replacing grey hydrogen with green or low-carbon alternatives
- Recognize decarbonization efforts across energy production, industrial usage, and transportation
- Offer carbon finance access, making clean hydrogen projects financially viable and more attractive to investors
- Support project registration under international carbon market schemes for broader market acceptance
- Ensure rigorous monitoring and verification through digital MRV technologies under the GCC 2.0 framework
🔹 Coming Soon: Hydrogen-Specific Methodology
GCC is actively developing a dedicated methodology, GCCNM002: Hydrogen for Energy Application and Feedstock, to support hydrogen production and use projects more precisely.
This methodology is currently under development and is expected to be finalized after the second half of 2025, creating a direct, standardized route for hydrogen projects to access carbon finance under the Global Carbon Council framework.
Baseline methodologies developed by the GCC will ensure that hydrogen projects demonstrate real, additional, and measurable climate benefits, building investor confidence and ensuring alignment with Paris Agreement goals.
Role of Carbon Finance: VCM, CORSIA, and Article 6.2
Carbon finance offers a critical lever to close the investment gap for hydrogen production:
- Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM): Enables corporates to buy verified credits from hydrogen projects to meet climate commitments ahead of regulatory mandates.
- CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation): Hydrogen projects certified under GCC with a host country letter can issue CORSIA-eligible credits, helping airlines offset emissions.
- Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement: Enables hydrogen projects to generate Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs), facilitating cross-border carbon trading with government authorization.
By unlocking these pathways, GCC helps hydrogen projects tap into carbon finance revenues, accelerating deployment and improving competitiveness against traditional fossil-based hydrogen.
GCC’s National Registry: Supporting Article 6.2 Operationalization and
To facilitate the seamless participation of countries and developers in Article 6.2 mechanisms, GCC offers support for its Carbon Market infrastructure and the National Registry Solution:
- Support to manage the issuance, transfer, and retirement of ITMOs under Article 6.2
- Supports transparent reporting for Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) under UNFCCC requirements
- Enables Corresponding Adjustments to prevent double counting of emission reductions
- Provides a secure, digital, and intuitive platform for carbon market engagement
- Unlocks revenue streams for governments through ITMO sales and mitigation investments
Through its National Registry solution, GCC is helping countries and project developers operationalize Article 6.2 quickly, credibly, and efficiently opening new international markets for mitigation activities, including the production of clean Hydrogen.
Why GCC Matters for the Hydrogen Sector
For hydrogen project developers and governments, partnering with GCC offers key advantages:
- Access to new finance streams through carbon credits and ITMOs
- Strengthened project bankability through international certification and credibility
- Early mover advantage in global carbon markets
- Alignment with net-zero commitments under the Paris Agreement
- Acceleration of hydrogen deployment with high-integrity climate outcomes
- Support for sustainable development, ensuring positive environmental and social impacts
In a sector where clean hydrogen faces tough cost and scalability challenges, carbon finance support from a trusted program like GCC can be the difference between a promising idea and a commercially successful project.
Conclusion
As the world races to decarbonize, hydrogen will play a defining role in reshaping energy, industry, and transportation. Carbon finance, enabled through trusted programs like the Global Carbon Council, offers the crucial catalyst to bring clean hydrogen projects to scale—supporting not just regional goals, but a global net-zero future.
At the Hydrogen MENA Summit 2025, GCC’s message was clear: Hydrogen’s time is now—and with the right carbon market frameworks, the clean hydrogen economy is within reach.
