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Green Hydrogen Projects in Southeast Asia:
A Developer's Map of Who's Building What

7 min read  ·  Feb 19, 2026  ·  By Alex

Aerial view of a Southeast Asian coastal city skyline, the regional setting for the green hydrogen projects mapped in this article

I get asked some version of this question constantly: who else is actually building green hydrogen projects in this region? And what can I learn from their structure before I finalize mine. There’s no single authoritative tracker that answers it cleanly. Project announcements, feasibility studies, and actual FIDs all get reported with the same breathless tone. So I put together my own map of what’s genuinely moving across Southeast Asia right now.

In short: Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines each have at least one green hydrogen project past the announcement stage. They range from a 24,000-tonne-a-year seawater electrolysis plant to an 8,000-tonne feasibility study backed by PETRONAS’s clean energy arm. None of them are at NEOM’s scale, and that’s exactly the point. These green hydrogen projects are the realistic comparables for most developers reading this, not the Saudi giga-project headline number.

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In this article

Vietnam: Tra Vinh's seawater-electrolysis plant

TGS Tra Vinh Green Hydrogen Corp is developing a seawater-electrolysis plant in Tra Vinh. It targets roughly 24,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year at an estimated cost of around $341 million. Using seawater rather than freshwater as the input distinguishes this project from most others in the region. Instead, it sidesteps a freshwater-access constraint that would otherwise complicate siting along much of Vietnam’s coastline.

Indonesia: Aslan Energy's Batam-to-Singapore pipeline

Aslan Energy Capital’s HEMU project sits in Batam, Indonesia’s Riau Islands, about 40 km from Singapore. Meanwhile, it pairs 600 MW of alkaline electrolysis capacity with a 1,200-MWh solar plant and battery storage for night operation. It targets FID in 2026. The commercial logic is export by pipeline. It would ship roughly 110,000 tonnes a year of gaseous hydrogen to a Singapore-based offtaker from 2028. The heads of agreement is already in place. Geography does a lot of the work here: Batam’s proximity to Singapore turns a land constraint into a pipeline-distance advantage.

Malaysia: two different plays, modular and PETRONAS-backed

Meanwhile, Malaysia has two distinct green hydrogen efforts worth tracking, at very different scales and with very different sponsors. Sarawak’s modular hydrogen plant, led by Chloroplant and H1Hydro Group, is a 10 MW project costing around $17 million. It therefore targets Q1 2026 as a deliberately small, fast-to-build demonstration rather than a scale play.

Separately, Asahi Kasei, Gentari Hydrogen (PETRONAS’s clean energy subsidiary), and JGC Holdings have completed a feasibility study. They have signed an MoU for a plant producing up to 8,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year. The plant would use a 60 MW-class alkaline electrolyzer system, with operation planned to start in 2027. Japan’s NEDO Green Innovation Fund backs it in part. Gentari frames it as a step toward Malaysia’s national green hydrogen production target of 200,000 tonnes a year by 2030.

Philippines: Hynfra's $1.5bn Mindoro ammonia project

Hynfra, a Polish developer, has secured a local partner for a roughly $1.5 billion green ammonia project on Mindoro Island. The company cites growing interest from Asian governments, Japan among them, in low-carbon ammonia produced within the Pacific Basin. For example, that demand shows up in green ammonia offtake in Southeast Asia. The company had not disclosed capacity, final partners, or offtake details as of mid-2026. That silence is informative: this project is earlier-stage than the others on this list. Instead, it sits closer to a capital-raising and partnership mandate than a construction timeline.

Project Country Scale Stage
TGS Tra Vinh Vietnam ~24,000 t H2/yr, ~$341M In development
Aslan Energy HEMU Indonesia 600 MW electrolysis, ~110,000 t/yr export Targeting FID 2026
Sarawak modular plant Malaysia 10 MW, ~$17M Targeting Q1 2026
Asahi Kasei / Gentari / JGC Malaysia Up to 8,000 t H2/yr, 60 MW-class FEED, operation planned 2027
Hynfra Mindoro Philippines ~$1.5bn green ammonia Early-stage, local partner secured

Where this breaks in practice

What strikes me looking at these green hydrogen projects side by side is how differently each one defines success. Aslan’s project is an export play, its economics depend entirely on a cross-border pipeline and a single offtaker’s commitment. Sarawak’s modular plant is optimized for speed and small absolute capital exposure, not for the lowest cost per kilogram. The Malaysia PETRONAS-backed project is explicitly a national-target contribution with multinational industrial sponsorship behind it. That sponsorship gets it access to funds like NEDO, which a purely private developer wouldn’t see. For instance, see green hydrogen project finance in Southeast Asia for how those structures get financed. By comparison, Hynfra’s project is, at the stage reported, still searching for the specific structure that will make $1.5bn bankable.

However, I’d caution against treating any single one of these as “the” regional benchmark. A developer evaluating a project in Vietnam shouldn’t size their offtake assumptions off Batam’s Singapore-pipeline economics. A Philippines developer chasing $1.5bn shouldn’t assume Malaysia’s NEDO-backed access to concessional funding is replicable without a multinational industrial sponsor.

What this means if you're building your own project

  • Match your comparable to your actual structure. Otherwise, an export-pipeline project should benchmark against Aslan, not Tra Vinh or Sarawak.
  • Notice which projects have a named offtaker already (Aslan) versus which are still searching for partnership structure (Hynfra). In fact, that gap maps almost directly to how close each is to FID.
  • A multinational industrial partner with access to a fund like NEDO changes your financing math meaningfully. For instance, the Malaysia PETRONAS-backed plant shows this clearly.
  • Smaller, modular projects like Sarawak’s aren’t a lesser version of a mega-project. Instead, they are a different strategy entirely, built for speed and lower capital exposure rather than scale economics.

Common mistakes I see

  • Citing NEOM’s capital stack as the regional benchmark when the actual Southeast Asian pipeline is an order of magnitude smaller.
  • Assuming an announced MoU or feasibility study is equivalent to a committed project. In fact, the gap between those stages and FID is where most projects actually stall.
  • Comparing cost-per-kilogram figures across projects with fundamentally different offtake structures as if they’re apples to apples. For instance, an export pipeline, domestic industrial use, and ammonia shipping do not price the same way.

Sources

FAQ

The green hydrogen projects past announcement include TGS Tra Vinh’s plant in Vietnam and Aslan Energy’s Batam-to-Singapore pipeline in Indonesia. Malaysia has two: a modular plant in Sarawak and a PETRONAS-backed feasibility study. The Philippines has Hynfra’s early-stage green ammonia project.

Specifically, Aslan Energy’s HEMU project in Batam, Indonesia, is the furthest along on export structure. It has a signed heads of agreement to pipe hydrogen to a Singapore-based offtaker from 2028, targeting FID in 2026.

Indeed, Malaysia has set a national target of 200,000 tonnes a year of green hydrogen production by 2030. The announced projects currently in development are an 8,000 t/yr PETRONAS-backed facility and a 10 MW modular plant in Sarawak. Together they represent only a small fraction of that target, so the region still needs significant further project development.

No. Reports put Hynfra’s Mindoro project at roughly $1.5 billion, considerably smaller than NEOM’s $8.4 billion financed capital stack. Meanwhile, as of mid-2026, the company had not disclosed specific capacity or offtake details.

If you’re developing a green hydrogen or green ammonia project anywhere in Southeast Asia, I’m happy to compare notes. I can then walk through how your structure compares to what’s actually getting financed in the region.

I’m Alex, founder of WeConnect Asia. I connect low-carbon fuel developers in Southeast Asia with the capital, offtakers, and strategic partners they need to reach FID.

This article reflects publicly reported information as of mid-2026 and is provided for general informational purposes. It does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice.

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Alex, Founder of WeConnect Asia

Alex, Founder of WeConnect Asia

I help low-carbon fuel and carbon removal project developers in Southeast Asia secure the commercial and financial partners needed to reach FID.

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