Can green hydrogen escape the geopolitics of fossil fuels? MSc IR student Anjjali Shrivastav argues that power is shifting from control of resources to control of the rules governing hydrogen markets. As major economies set competing regulatory frameworks, developing producer countries face rising costs and limited influence — risking a transition that reproduces global inequalities in a new form.
Green hydrogen is often presented as the clean break that will finally end the geopolitics of fossil fuels. Renewable energy, unlike oil and gas, is far more widely distributed. No single country possesses a monopoly over sunlight or wind in the way that Saudi Arabia possesses oil reserves. That assumption deserves more scrutiny.
The transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen does not end geopolitics. It changes where geopolitical power sits. Instead of competing over who controls oil reserves, countries are beginning to compete over who controls the rules governing hydrogen production, certification, and trade. In practice, the most important source of power in the hydrogen economy may not be ownership of resources, but the ability to decide what qualifies as “green” hydrogen in the first place.
Why the Global South matters
Green hydrogen is cheapest to produce in places with abundant renewable energy, large land areas, and relatively low costs. Countries such as Namibia, Morocco, Oman, Chile, and Australia possess significant advantages because of their solar and wind potential.
According to research by the International Energy Agency and BloombergNEF, hydrogen produced in these regions could cost substantially less than production in Europe or Japan.
At the same time, major industrial economies are unlikely to produce enough hydrogen domestically to meet their climate goals. The European Union’s REPowerEU strategy aims to import ten million tonnes of renewable hydrogen annually by 2030. Import dependence is not a temporary solution for Europe: it is the strategy itself.
This creates a familiar global structure: resource-rich developing countries supplying industrialised economies. But renewable energy sources are far more geographically dispersed than oil, making producer coordination much harder than during the era of OPEC. As a result, importing powers retain significant leverage.
Certification as geopolitical power
There is currently no binding international definition of green hydrogen. Institutions such as the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency provide technical guidance, but no multilateral system exists with legal authority over hydrogen certification.
The European Union has effectively stepped into this vacuum. Through the Renewable Energy Directive III and its delegated regulations on renewable fuels of non-biological origin, the EU has established three major conditions for hydrogen entering the European market.
First is “additionality”: hydrogen producers must use electricity from newly built renewable energy projects rather than existing grid electricity.
Second is “temporal correlation”: hydrogen production must occur at the same time as renewable electricity generation.
Third is “geographical correlation”: the electricity used must be generated locally or regionally.
Each rule has a credible environmental rationale. The problem is not the standards themselves, but the process through which they were created.
These standards were designed inside EU institutions. Producer countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East had little meaningful influence over the rules despite being expected to comply with them.
Yet compliance is practically unavoidable for any exporter seeking access to the European market. This is where green hydrogen becomes geopolitical.
The EU is using regulatory power and market size to shape global energy governance beyond its borders. In effect, certification is operating as a form of de facto international law.
A fragmented global system
The European Union is no longer the only actor attempting to shape hydrogen governance. The United States, Japan, and China are each developing their own hydrogen frameworks with different definitions, technologies, and industrial priorities.
The United States has adopted a technology-neutral approach through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 45V hydrogen tax credits. Japan focuses more heavily on lifecycle carbon intensity, while China dominates global electrolyser manufacturing.
This does not create a coherent global hydrogen system. It creates fragmentation.
Producer countries now face conflicting demands from different importing powers. A project using Chinese electrolysers may face barriers in Europe, while projects designed around EU certification standards may become more expensive elsewhere.
The costs of this fragmentation fall disproportionately on developing producer countries. Industrial powers possess the capacity to set standards and protect domestic industries. Most exporters do not. This creates a governance asymmetry where industrial powers write the rules while producer nations absorb the compliance costs.
Lessons from fossil fuels
The history of fossil fuels offers an important lesson. In the early decades of the oil economy, producing countries possessed resources but exercised limited influence over pricing, production, or governance structures. Those systems were largely shaped by Western oil companies and industrial powers.
Hydrogen differs from oil in important ways. Renewable resources are more widely distributed, and hydrogen production lacks the same geographic scarcity that gave oil producers leverage. But the central political issue remains similar.
The most important form of power is not simply ownership of resources. It is the ability to define the rules governing access, trade, and legitimacy. That dynamic is already visible in the emerging hydrogen economy.
The politics of energy transition
Green hydrogen will play an important role in decarbonising industries such as steel, shipping, aviation, and chemicals. The issue is not the technology itself, but the governance surrounding it.
The transition away from fossil fuels does not automatically produce a fairer global energy system. Without broader participation in rule-making, the hydrogen economy risks reproducing older inequalities in a new form.
A more balanced system would require genuinely multilateral governance structures involving both importing and producing countries. The politics surrounding green hydrogen are therefore about more than energy.
In the fossil fuel era, power often came from controlling resources beneath the ground. In the hydrogen era, power may increasingly come from controlling the standards governing how those resources are produced, traded, and recognised. The energy transition is changing the form of geopolitical power, not eliminating it.
