ADB and Japan Back AM Green's Kakinada Green Ammonia Plant With a $100 Million Loan

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of Japan have signed financing agreements with AM Green Ammonia (India) for its green ammonia plant at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh. The centrepiece is a US$100 million loan from the Leading Asia's Private Infrastructure Fund 2 (LEAP-2), which is financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and administered by ADB. The agreements were signed on 15 October 2026.

The deal is the first investment under ACCEL, short for Action for Creating Energy Security for Long-term Resilience, an initiative ADB and Japan launched in May 2026. Its first use is a clear sign of how multilateral lenders see green ammonia: as an energy-security asset, not only a climate project.

The project

AM Green's Kakinada project converts a former natural gas-based ammonia and urea complex into a plant that makes ammonia using renewable electricity. Instead of making hydrogen from natural gas, which releases carbon dioxide, the plant will split water in electrolysers powered by solar and wind. That hydrogen is then combined with nitrogen from the air to make ammonia.

Reports give somewhat different capacity figures. Most coverage, including Renewable Watch, describes a plant of about 1.1 million tonnes a year, built in two phases of 547,500 tonnes each. Gasworld describes 1.5 million tonnes a year of eventual capacity, with 0.5 million tonnes a year from 2027. GKToday dates initial commercial production to 2027–28 and later phases to around March 2030. The differences probably reflect different phases and definitions, but AM Green has not publicly reconciled them.

Who is buying

Green ammonia projects live or die on long-term offtake contracts. AM Green has signed one of the most significant in the sector: Germany's Uniper has agreed to buy up to 500,000 tonnes a year from 2028. Gasworld also notes a €585 million contract under Germany's H2Global mechanism, and term sheets with Yara and Keppel. No Japanese buyer has been named yet, even though Japan is now a financier. Japanese utilities have been testing ammonia co-firing in coal plants, so a Japanese offtake deal is a possibility to watch.

Why ammonia, and why India

Ammonia is the practical way to ship hydrogen. Hydrogen itself is very light and hard to store, and has to be compressed or cooled to −253°C. Ammonia liquefies at about −33°C or under moderate pressure, the world already moves millions of tonnes of it a year, and it can be used directly as a fertiliser feedstock, as a shipping fuel, co-fired in power plants, or "cracked" back into hydrogen.

India's case rests on cost. Green ammonia's price is mostly the price of electricity, and India has some of the world's cheapest solar power along with large areas of land suitable for renewables. Under the National Green Hydrogen Mission, India has targeted 5 million tonnes a year of green hydrogen production by 2030, and export-oriented ammonia projects at ports such as Kakinada, Kandla and Tuticorin are central to it.

Reusing a brownfield site also helps. An old ammonia-urea complex already has the land, utilities, port links, storage and permits for ammonia handling, which removes some of the most time-consuming steps in building a new chemical plant.

Why concessional finance matters

Green ammonia plants are capital-intensive, and the technology is still unproven at this scale, which makes commercial lenders cautious. A loan from a Japanese-backed, ADB-administered fund brings long tenor and lower cost of capital. It also signals to commercial banks that the project has been through the due diligence of a multilateral lender, which often helps unlock further debt. ADB's project page still lists the financing as "proposed", which is common while documentation is completed, but the signing has been reported across trade outlets.

For Japan, which imports most of its energy, supporting supply chains for low-carbon fuels from friendly countries fits the "energy security" framing in ACCEL's name. For India, it is the latest sign that foreign capital is willing to back its green-molecule export strategy.

What to watch

The main risks are execution: commissioning electrolysers at gigawatt scale, keeping round-the-clock renewable supply to a chemical plant that prefers steady operation, and delivering on time to meet the 2028 Uniper offtake. If Kakinada starts producing on schedule, it will be among the first large green-ammonia export plants in the world and a reference project for others in India.

Sources

• Renewable Watch — ADB and Japan to finance AM Green's ammonia project in Andhra Pradesh
• Gasworld — Japan invests in AM Green's 1.5 mtpa green ammonia plant
• GKToday — ADB and Japan finance green ammonia plant in Kakinada
• FuelCellsWorks — ADB and Japan back AM Green's 1.1 million tonne green ammonia plant with $100M loan
• Solar Quarter — ADB and Japan finance 1.1 million tonne green ammonia plant in India under ACCEL
• ADB — Project 58517-001