South Pole and UNIDO Join Forces to Unlock Carbon Finance for Low-Carbon Hydrogen Development

Singapore, December 3, 2025 — South Pole and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have signed a Joint Declaration to advance industrial decarbonisation and accelerate the global energy transition by leveraging carbon markets to support low-carbon hydrogen development.

Through South Pole's Asian Centre for Carbon Excellence (ACCE), South Pole and UNIDO will cooperate across methodology development, policy advocacy, market building, capacity development, and innovation with real world application and actionable results.

The collaboration focuses on three overarching goals:

• Advancing industrial decarbonisation through low-carbon hydrogen solutions.
  
• Promoting and creating the enabling structures for high-integrity carbon markets to play a pivotal role as a mechanism to drive investment.
  
• Supporting the global energy transition by developing projects under new market mechanisms such as Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and other emerging systems.

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The partnership aims to support countries in building enabling environments for action. It plans to promote the integration of hydrogen-based solutions into global carbon markets, and contribute to the design of high-integrity carbon finance frameworks, as well as fit-for-purpose methodological frameworks. Such frameworks will be aligned with internationally recognized carbon standards and best practices, to quantify and monetize emission reductions from low-carbon hydrogen projects. South Pole and UNIDO aim to focus on knowledge sharing, training, and research.

These efforts are intended to unlock much-needed financing for low-carbon hydrogen activities and contribute to achieving global net-zero targets.

A partnership driving real change

"This collaboration brings together UNIDO's deep industrial expertise and South Pole's global carbon market leadership" said Frederic Gagnon-Lebrun, Global Senior Director, Policy & Strategy at South Pole. "We are proud to bring our know-how to unlocking the potential of carbon markets as a financing tool for the implementation of real-world, low-carbon hydrogen solutions, accelerating progress towards achieving net-zero emissions on a global scale".

Low-carbon hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways such as use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels, integrating Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) systems into the production infrastructure, or adopting other approaches that result in the lowering of CO2e intensity to produce.

Despite low-carbon hydrogen having the potential to replace fossil fuel use across energy, industry, and transport sectors (making it a critical component of achieving net zero) low-carbon hydrogen solutions often remain less cost-competitive compared with traditional hydrogen production approaches.

Through this partnership, South Pole and UNIDO seek to bridge this financing gap by mobilizing carbon market mechanisms to make low-carbon hydrogen viable, particularly in developing and emerging economies.

"We are pleased to establish a partnership with South Pole to enable developing countries and transition economies to participate in - and benefit from - high-integrity carbon markets" said Petra Schwager, Chief, Climate and Technology Partnerships Division, UNIDO. "Carbon markets can provide an additional revenue stream for capital-intensive hydrogen projects with long payback periods, accelerating their development and scale-up. This partnership allows us to leverage our complementary technical and industrial expertise in hydrogen and create strong synergies with UNIDO's Global Programme for Hydrogen in Industry".

About South Pole

South Pole is the world's leading carbon asset developer and climate consultancy.

Since 2006, South Pole has been a trusted partner and advisor to governments, public sector organisations, and leading businesses on their decarbonisation journeys. South Pole serves over 1,000 clients across the world, and its global team of experts has helped many Fortune 500 businesses implement comprehensive strategies that help build resilience and turn climate action into long-term business opportunities. In line with its mission to deliver true climate impact for all, South Pole has used the power of markets to help channel climate finance to over 850 projects in more than 50 countries across the globe.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

UNIDO is a specialized United Nations agency with a unique mandate to promote and accelerate sustainable industrial development, supporting developing countries and emerging economies in building and transforming their industries.

UNIDO has established the Global Carbon Solutions Unit to build high-impact projects and partnerships in the carbon market, driving innovation, and enabling Member States to leverage Article 6 mechanisms for sustainable industrial development.

Asian Centre for Carbon Excellence (ACCE)

The ACCE platform - jointly developed by South Pole and GenZero, and supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board - is seeking low-carbon hydrogen pilot projects that have either completed or are in advanced stages of techno-economic assessment and wish to understand the role carbon finance can play in overcoming financial barriers. ACCE seeks to unlock carbon markets as a financing tool for decarbonisation investments across five high-impact and hard-to-abate sectors: coal, hydrogen, cement, steel and shipping.