PM announces Hydrogen Green Mission, self-reliance in energy by 2047
Delivering his Independence Day address from the Red Fort on 15 August 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally announced the launch of a National Hydrogen Mission to accelerate plans to generate the carbon-free fuel from renewables as he set a target for India to achieve self-reliance in energy by 2047. “For India to progress, for Atmanirbhar Bharat, energy independence is necessary,” he said. “India has to take a pledge that it will be energy independent by the year we celebrate 100th year of Independence.” India, he said, spends over Rs 12 lakh crore on energy imports every year.
In line with the government’s focus on hydrogen, both private and public sector companies have announced ambitious hydrogen projects. While Reliance Industries and Adani Group are pushing ahead with their plans to make hydrogen a part of their portfolio, the nation’s biggest state-run refiner IOC has also unveiled hydrogen plans and is working on technology to develop hydrogen-spiked compressed natural gas or H-CNG.
Hydrogen is the simplest and smallest element in the periodic table. The pathways to produce it are very diverse, and so are the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). However, no matter how it is produced, it ends up with the same carbon-free molecule. Currently, it is produced predominantly through Steam Methane Reforming, or SMR, which utilises fossil fuels, such as natural gas or coal, and through Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using a current of electricity. At present, all hydrogen consumed in India comes from fossil fuels. By its colour in the “hydrogen taxonomy rainbow”, it can be called as ‘Grey’ hydrogen. Grey hydrogen has increasingly been produced also from coal, with significantly higher CO2 emissions – the main culprit for climate change – and H2 per unit of hydrogen produced, so much that is often called brown or black hydrogen instead of grey. It is produced at industrial scale globally today, with associated emissions comparable to the combined emissions of UK and Indonesia. It has no energy transition value, quite the opposite.
Blue hydrogen follows the same process as grey, with the additional technologies necessary to capture the CO2 produced when hydrogen is split from methane (or from coal) and store it for long term. It is not one colour but rather a very broad gradation, as not 100 percent of the CO2 produced can be captured, and not all means of storing it are equally effective in the long term. The main point is that capturing large part of the CO2.
It is none of this India wants. India’s National Hydrogen Mission (NHM) is focused on green hydrogen, which is a totally carbon-free. Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity. This is a very different pathway from grey and blue hydrogen. But at present, there is only one green hydrogen project with a production capacity of one tonne per day in Bikaner (Rajasthan) in the private sector. The government had so far kept away, but is supporting a Research and Development project, a 5 Nm3/h (normal cubic meter per hour) green hydrogen production plant based on solar energy-powered electrolysis at the National Institute of Solar Energy, Gurugram (Haryana). Now, following its commitment made at the COP26, the nation is planning to produce three-fourths of green hydrogen by electrolysis by 2030. The National Green Hydrogen Mission envisages to start commercial production of green hydrogen production from FY2025-26 onwards. The draft proposes to undertake hydrogen production projects through a competitive bidding mode which would be open to participation from both private and public entities.
