India's maritime decarbonisation drive just got a landmark moment on the Gujarat coastline. Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal on Saturday, September 26, 2026, addressed the Shilanyas — the foundation-laying ceremony — of a 150 tonnes-per-day (TPD) e-Methanol Plant at Deendayal Port, Kandla, calling the project a collaboration between Assam and Gujarat for India's green future.

What is getting built at Kandla — and why it matters

Deendayal Port is one of India's 12 major ports, a high-volume cargo hub anchoring Gujarat's industrial coastline. The new facility will produce electro-methanol — commonly called e-Methanol — a synthetic fuel manufactured using green hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide. At 150 TPD, the plant is among the larger green-fuel production facilities proposed at any Indian port, and its location directly on port premises is intentional: it brings the fuel to the ships that need it.

E-Methanol is gaining global traction as a low-emission marine fuel because it can be stored and bunkered using existing infrastructure, unlike liquid hydrogen, which demands cryogenic handling. For a port like Kandla, producing it on-site could eventually position the facility as a regional bunkering hub for green shipping corridors.

The Assam-Gujarat axis behind the project

Sonowal framed the plant as an Assam-Gujarat collaboration — an inter-state pairing that brings together Assam's renewable energy and feedstock potential with Gujarat's port infrastructure and industrial scale. As a former Chief Minister of Assam now leading India's ports ministry, Sonowal's framing of this as a northeast-west collaboration is pointed: it signals that the green energy transition is expected to draw on resources spread across the country, not just the coastal states.

The project sits squarely within India's National Green Hydrogen Mission, launched in 2023, which targets the production of green hydrogen and its derivatives — including e-Methanol — to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors. Shipping is near the top of that list.

Maritime India Vision 2030 and the net-zero clock

India has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070, and the shipping sector — responsible for roughly 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — faces mounting regulatory pressure from the International Maritime Organization, which has set its own decarbonisation targets. Maritime India Vision 2030, the government's blueprint for the sector, explicitly identifies green fuel production at major ports as a strategic priority. Kandla's e-Methanol plant is a direct, concrete expression of that strategy.

The next milestones to watch: construction progress, a commissioning timeline, and whether similar plants are announced at other major ports on India's eastern and western coasts. The Kandla foundation-laying sets a precedent — and a benchmark.