TeaThe Narendra Modi government has approved a scheme that has been generating buzz among renewable energy enthusiasts and industry for some time now, promising to bring a new age fuel into the mainstream.
On January 4, the Union Cabinet approved the Green Hydrogen Mission with a massive budget of Rs 19,744 crore, a program that aims to produce 5 million metric tonnes of clean hydrogen fuel by 2030.
have been planning Praise To bring India on the path of sustainable development in line with the aspirations and needs of the country by the government. Industry looking to invest in green hydrogen has grown in praise of – Estimated to cross Rs 8 lakh crore – as an opportunity to reduce our carbon footprint while maintaining growth.
Reliance Industries and the Adani Group – India’s two largest conglomerates – have been racing to produce green hydrogen ever since the mission was announced by the prime minister on August 15 a year ago.
Enthusiasm for the fuel hasn’t stopped growing. A few days before the cabinet approval, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav announced India will have its first green hydrogen-fuelled trains by the end of this year, and NTPC said it has began A green hydrogen fusion in Gujarat.
Over the next eight years, the production of green hydrogen is expected to add an additional 125 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity and create six million jobs.
But this transition to a cleaner alternative hinges on one important action: accelerating India’s decarbonisation. The government hopes that the dash for green hydrogen will reduce India’s huge carbon emissions by 2.7 billion tonnes, about 55 million tonnes. India’s bouquet of renewable energy sources includes solar, wind, hydro and nuclear along with green hydrogen.
India’s push for green hydrogen production is part of a larger move by the government towards adopting renewable and green sources of energy. At the start of its first term, the Modi government announced an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by the end of 2022. That deadline has passed, and the target has been missed, but capacity addition in the intervening period has been impressive. From 38 GW in October 2015, India’s renewable energy capacity grew to 116 GW by the end of 2022. Green hydrogen fits right into this move away from fossil fuels. And that’s why it is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
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What is green hydrogen?
To understand what hydrogen diffusion is, it is necessary to know how it works. Hydrogen is a colourless, odorless gas that is found in abundance in the atmosphere around us. But it has to be extracted to be used as fuel.
Green hydrogen is ‘green’ because of the extraction method involved – the use of renewable sources can ensure zero emissions upon combustion. For perspective, burning one kg of coal – India’s primary source of electricity – generates about 2.4 kg of carbon emissions.
Green hydrogen is extracted through the process of electrolysis, which involves running a current through a liquid to separate the elements. Other methods include coal gasification or steam methane reformation (SMR). However, these methods involve the release of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the process, making them unsustainable. Depending on the method and amount of greenhouse gas ultimately released, hydrogen is called ‘Brown’, ‘Grey’ or ‘Blue’.
The promotion of green hydrogen lies in its potential to replace fossil fuels in the production of carbon-heavy materials such as steel and cement, as well as powering jet planes and ships. Oil and gas account for 85 percent of India’s fossil imports. Domestic production and export of green hydrogen can help balance the scale, which the Modi government is hoping for.
At the moment, the cost is prohibitively high, at least for the smaller players. It costs 300 to 400 rupees to produce one kg of green hydrogen. considered viable To produce at a cost of around Rs 100 per kg.
In February 2022, the government came out with a Policy To encourage investment in green hydrogen, offer a Sacrifice Promise to set up a single-window portal for inter-state transmission charges and project approvals for solar or wind power for 25 years.
On Wednesday, the government added several concessions to the offer. “Under the Strategic Intervention for Green Hydrogen Transition Program (SIGHT), two different financial incentive mechanisms – targeting domestic manufacturing of electrolyzers and production of green hydrogen – will be provided under the mission,” it announced in a press release, adding that the benefits will extend to “pilot projects in emerging end-use sectors and production routes.”
The government has promised that hydrogen hubs will come up in states deemed most viable for hosting them, and clear regulations, policies and framework will give a go ahead to interested players.
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Is the hydrogen hype just hot air?
For several big announcements – such as Reliance’s $8 billion initiative to build renewable energy equipment and Adani Green’s $50 billion Signed a deal with France’s Total Energy to set up the electrolyser, production yet to begin.
The current enthusiasm for green hydrogen is not the first time the industry has been swayed by promises of an alternative fuel-led future, according to a economist ArticleWhich references a craze for hydrogen fuel-cell cars in the 2000s that eventually fizzled out.
Critics have said that hydrogen’s potential to serve carbon-heavy industries may be limited by the enormous amount of gas needed to service batteries, planes and ships compared to conventional sources. Liquefaction of hydrogen is also an extremely energy-consuming process which can lead to inefficiencies.
“Hydrogen has a very good gravitational energy density – the amount of energy per unit weight. On this measure, hydrogen beats diesel, petrol and jet fuel by almost three times and LNG by a factor of 2.7 – which is why it is a Makes great rocket fuel,” energy consultant Michael Liebreich wrote In a Bloomberg article last year. However, “it has a very low energy density – the amount of energy per unit volume. It is worth remembering that while a cubic meter of water weighs 1,000 kg; a cubic meter of hydrogen weighs only 71 kg. On a volumetric basis, the energy density of hydrogen is a quarter that of jet fuel, and only 40 percent that of LNG.
But fueled by international trends and the urgent need to transform the energy sector, conviction in the practical use of green hydrogen is stronger than ever, experts say. Told, The demand for green hydrogen is expected to increase in India four times By 2050, as per NITI Aayog.
The devil lies in how smoothly India has been able to implement the mission and meet this growing demand.
(Editing by Anurag Choubey)