India–Norway Green Partnership: Diversifying Energy, Deepening Decarbonization – Analysis

July 23, 2026 
Observer Research Foundation
By Aadya Chaturvedi

Key Takeaways:

India and Norway’s new Green Strategic Partnership expands cooperation on LNG, renewables, and decarbonisation, helping India diversify energy supplies while advancing its long-term energy transition.

India’s dependence on West Asian LPG and LNG has exposed supply vulnerabilities amid regional instability. Closer energy cooperation with Norway can strengthen resilience through diversified imports and clean technologies.

The India–Norway Green Strategic Partnership combines energy security with climate goals by advancing collaboration on offshore wind, carbon capture, and clean energy innovation for long-term decarbonisation.

India and Norway elevated their bilateral ties to a ‘Green Strategic Partnership’ during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official visit to Norway in May. The Partnership aims to strengthen cooperation between the two countries on climate and environmental issues, with both sides affirming mutual support for achieving their respective climate goals. It encompasses joint research and development (R&D) and knowledge sharing across energy security, the green transition, decarbonisation, and the blue economy.

This Partnership comes at a time when the West Asia crisis has made India’s dependence on the region for energy supplies more vulnerable, exposing twin challenges: the need to diversify supplies and to accelerate the domestic energy transition. Norway, with its robust renewables sector and established oil and gas industry, is looking to expand its markets beyond Europe. The Partnership, then, rests on this mutual need.


Though no energy deals were signed during the visit, the Partnership adds a new dimension toIndia’s energy security strategy and enhances the prospects for its energy transition and climate goals. Its implications for LPG and natural gas trade, renewable energy, and decarbonisation warrant closer examination.
Enhancing Natural Gas and LPG Trade

The two countries discussed Norway’s potential supply of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to India. Norway is the world’s fourth-largest natural gas exporter and the fifth-largest Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) exporter. However, most of its LNG and LPG exports are earmarked for Europe. Oil and gas comprise 57 percent of its total exports, making them a major pillar of its economic growth. In the wake of sanctions on Russian oil and gas following its conflict with Ukraine, Norway has sought to compete and fill the vacuum, while also looking for new markets beyond Europe.

India imports 90 percent of its LPG and 60 percent of its LNG from West Asia, a dependence whose risks have been laid bare by the recent escalation in the region. For New Delhi, this presents not only an energy security risk but also a socio-political quagmire, since LPG is used as cooking fuel by millions of poor households, while LNG is indispensable for fertiliser and petrochemical production. Recent disruptions at the world’s largest LNG production facility in Qatar’s Ras Laffan City, and its consequent shutdown, only make the need to diversify more acute.


Both countries recognise this mutual need, as evidenced by the agreements signed between them to date. In February 2024, Norwegian energy giant Equinor entered into a 15-year LNG supply agreement with Indian fertiliser and petrochemical company Deepak Fertilisers. In February 2025, Equinor also entered into a one-year agreement with state refiner Bharat Petroleum, undertaking to supply LPG. Norwegian infrastructure company Crown LNG has committed US$1 billion for an LNG regasification terminal to be built in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.

The Partnership can build on this foundation to enable comprehensive long-term energy trade. Though Norwegian fuels cannot be a substitute for their West Asian counterparts in terms of price and scale in the short term, they augment India’s ongoing efforts to expand its supply basket. For Norway, the reduced export capacities of Qatar and Russia — the former disrupted by the Ras Laffan shutdown, the latter constrained by sanctions — create an opening to become a stable supplier for markets beyond Europe, at a time when it is expanding its own domestic gas production capacity
Collaboration on Renewable Energy and Decarbonisation

The Partnership outlines the scope of collaboration on renewable energy and decarbonisation technologies, with several bilateral agreements signed to conduct joint R&D and strengthen academic cooperation. Norway is a global leader in renewable energy, producing over 90 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources, and has also made strides in deploying carbon capture systems. India, by contrast, is gradually expanding the share of renewables in its electricity mix, which currently stands at 19 percent.


While India leads in solar energy production, Norway leads in wind energy deployment. Norway has pioneered floating offshore wind (FLOW) technologies: in 2023, it commissioned a 94.6 MW floating offshore wind farm — the world’s largest — in the North Sea, which powers oil and gas fields in the region. FLOW involves mounting wind turbines on buoyant platforms rather than on the seabed, allowing the turbines to float in deeper waters and harness higher marine wind speeds. India has recently been collaborating with other countries to commence offshore wind (OFW) operations in blocks identified off the coasts of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, with the aim of powering its coastal industrial hubs. In this regard, the Partnership could also facilitate the use of Norwegian expertise for joint feasibility studies and R&D on FLOW systems, which offer wider coverage than fixed OFW plants.

Agreements were also signed to collaborate on carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS) technologies—currently the only known technology capable of reducing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, power, and fertilisers. CCUS is a major pillar of Norway’s decarbonisation strategy. Since the late 1990s, the country has deployed carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects to capture CO₂ from natural gas and oil operations in the North Sea. More recently, the Norwegian government operationalised the US$2 billion Project Longship, which aims to establish a full-scale CCS value chain in which CO₂ will be captured from multiple industrial sources, liquefied, transported via pipelines, and stored in subsea wells beneath the North Sea. The project is expected to store 1.5 million tonnes of CO₂ annually and has received investments from oil marketing companies (OMCs).

India is the third-largest CO₂ emitter in the world. It aims to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 47 percent from 2005 levels by 2035 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. In 2025, the government launched the R&D Roadmap for CCUS, which will create CCUS test beds in select industrial locations. The Union Budget 2026-27 also earmarked INR 20,000 crore for CCUS scaling across five sectors: power, steel, cement, refineries, and chemicals. In this regard, the Indo-Norwegian partnership can enable both R&D and technology transfer. Norway’s experience in establishing full-scale CCUS chains can boost India’s commercialisation goals as it progresses along its own decarbonisation pathway.
What the Future Holds for the Partnership

This cooperation builds on the India-European Free Trade Association (EFTA) trade agreement — of which Norway is a member — signed in 2025. The synergy created by that agreement can be leveraged for deeper engagement in the energy and renewables sectors. At the same time, it also holds potential for broader collaboration in the sectors that power the energy transition. Norway, which is home to some of the world’s largest deposits of rare earths, graphite, and quartz, could be a prospective supplier for India’s growing battery and chip manufacturing industries. These are crucial components for several clean technologies, such as EVs, solar cells, and wind turbines. Wider engagement on critical minerals exploration and processing would, therefore, make this green partnership more synchronised and comprehensive.

About the author: Aadya Chaturvedi is a Research Assistant with the Centre for Economy and Growth at the Observer Research Foundation.

Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation.

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