Presentation short abstract

Using a mixed-methods approach, the study maps capital flows to Ceará’s “H2V Hub” by tracing planned and executed investments and incentives between 2022 and 2032. This strategy allows identifying who captures its economic benefits and how its implementation reinforces North–South asymmetries.

Presentation long abstract

The new “green” hydrogen (GH2) frontier advances in Global South driven by Europe’s current energy constraints and growing demand for low-carbon alternatives, and finds in Brazil and especially in Ceará State, a key expansion area, due to its favorable energetic and geographic conditions. In this context, Brazil seeks to expand its GH2 industry, through subsidies and incentives to attract foreign investments. However, Brazil's implementation model relies on importing technologies from the North to deploy the GH2 production chain, which, once in place, will be oriented to export the GH2 in large-scale on its low-value form as ammonia. This model may entail a set of structural implications for Brazil, such as internalizing socio-environmental impacts, constraining the decarbonization of the national industry sectors and turns the GH2 into a commodity, factors that restrict the generation of economic benefits and reinforces asymmetries and dependency patterns under a “green” narrative. These structural implications remain largely unexplored in the literature on GH2 and energy transitions. Using a mixed-methods design, the study combines interviews with port officials and public managers with systematic analysis of secondary data to examine the emerging capital flows associated with the “Green Hydrogen Hub” at Pecém Industrial and Port Complex (CIPP) in Ceará, tracing planned and executed investments and incentives between 2022 and 2032. The study contributes to debate by identifying who benefits economically from Ceará’s GH2 and highlighting the origin and destination of the financial resources mobilized to this new energy frontier.