The hydrogen revolution is taking shape in India
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Green hydrogen revolution - An analysis
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- The story: India has been striving to move away from fossil fuels, and into renewables. The green hydrogen concept is part of that narrative. It gained depth when India's richest man Mukesh Ambani announced bringing the cost of green hydrogen to under $2 per kg by 2030.
- What Ambani meant: The cost of green hydrogen made by electrolysis is around Rs.350 per kg. The Centre plans to bring it down to Rs.160 per kg by 2029-30. Mukesh Ambani said India can set an aggressive target of achieving under $1 per kg new-age emission free fuel cost within a decade. Such pricing will make India’s plan to build green hydrogen plants to run on electricity produced by green energy sources a value proposition. Hydrogen can be used for fuel cells and is leveraged for mobility applications and transportation.
- How is it made: Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyzer powered by electricity from green energy sources such as wind and solar.
- Most parts of India receive 4-7 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of solar energy per square metre per day
- The green hydrogen game looks like an ideal solution to help India meet its energy needs
- India’s large landmass and low wind and solar tariff can produce low-cost green hydrogen and ammonia for exports
- The PM has already announced a National Hydrogen Mission
- What about savings: India spends around Rs.12 trillion annually for energy needs. Savings due to reduced energy imports following the domestic ramp up of green hydrogen production will be a boon. Foreign exchange savings can be deployed towards infrastructure creation, health and education. It will also help India meet its nationally determined contribution targets.
- What kind of policy: The government plans to implement the green hydrogen consumption obligation (GHCO) in fertilizer production and petroleum refining, similar to that done with renewable purchase obligations (RPO). India plans to shortly kick-start the play by calling bids for 4 GW electrolyzer capacity and extending the PLI scheme for manufacturing electrolyzers. Also, the draft Electricity Rules, 2021, floated by the power ministry have allowed green hydrogen purchase to help meet RPOs.
- Today: Many firms, including NTPC Renewable Energy, have gone into green hydrogen play. The NTPC unit is setting up India’s largest solar park of 4.75 GW in Gujarat and plans to make green hydrogen there on a commercial scale. NTPC has also called bids for setting up a pilot project for mixing green hydrogen with natural gas for the city gas distribution network. Input requirements are in place to drive production cost down with more than half of 817 GW of India’s electricity requirement is to be met from clean energy by 2030.
- Knowledge centre:
- Hydrogen as fuel - Hydrogen is a clean fuel that, when consumed in a fuel cell, produces only water. Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestic resources, such as natural gas, nuclear power, biomass, and renewable power like solar and wind. This makes it an attractive fuel option for transportation and electricity generation applications. Hydrogen fuel can be produced through natural gas reforming (a thermal process), electrolysis, solar-driven and biological processes.
- Processes to make hydrogen - (i) THERMAL PROCESSES - This involves steam reforming, a high-temperature process in which steam reacts with a hydrocarbon fuel to produce hydrogen. Many hydrocarbon fuels can be reformed to produce hydrogen, including natural gas, diesel, renewable liquid fuels, gasified coal, or gasified biomass. Today, about 95% of all hydrogen is produced from steam reforming of natural gas. (ii) ELECTROLYTIC PROCESSES - Water can be separated into oxygen and hydrogen through a process called electrolysis. Electrolytic processes take place in an electrolyzer, which functions much like a fuel cell in reverse—instead of using the energy of a hydrogen molecule, like a fuel cell does, an electrolyzer creates hydrogen from water molecules. (iii) SOLAR-DRIVEN PROCESSES - These use light as the agent for hydrogen production. There are a few solar-driven processes, including photobiological, photoelectrochemical, and solar thermochemical. Photobiological processes use the natural photosynthetic activity of bacteria and green algae to produce hydrogen. Photoelectrochemical processes use specialized semiconductors to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Solar thermochemical hydrogen production uses concentrated solar power to drive water splitting reactions often along with other species such as metal oxides. (iv) BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES - These use microbes such as bacteria and microalgae and can produce hydrogen through biological reactions. In microbial biomass conversion, the microbes break down organic matter like biomass or wastewater to produce hydrogen, while in photobiological processes the microbes use sunlight as the energy source.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the nature of policy needed to
meaningfully move India away from fossil fuels, and into green energy,
by 2030. (2) What is the green hydrogen revolution? Explain. (3) How can
the government of India work with the Indian corporates, to bring about
an energy revolution? Explain.
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