Green Hydrogen: Can it become the future fuel of India

You gain some, you lose some and that’s the rule of life, however this does not hold true in the unique sphere of energy and development where the world is headed towards a better developed sustainable world as the world seems to have cracked the code for a future that would thrive on the clean and green energy and this can be seen with the path that India among the many other countries have adopted to follow. India a party to major conferences related to climate change, is the country with the third largest carbon emissions in the world with 2.65 GT of carbon emissions, only after the United States and China and thus has the goal of reducing the carbon emissions contributed by the country.

The biggest contributing factors to India’s carbon emissions are the electricity and the transport and for India to reduce the carbon emissions and eventually follow the decarbonization path, it becomes essential for India to invest in green hydrogen and new and renewable energy. The green hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel which has the potential of replacing the fossil fuels which are composed of hydrocarbons and eventually release carbon in forms of gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, etc. Thus, green hydrogen which is procured through the process of electrolysis of water which releases the gases hydrogen and oxygen conducted through the energy procured from renewable energy and thus it can be used in limiting the carbon dioxide emissions. Also, because of the drastically falling prices of the renewable energy and rise in competition for the production of green hydrogen due to strategic push from the countries which eventually leads to lower prices for electrolysis makes green hydrogen the best potential one of the low carbon fuels to replace the fossil fuels. Also, according to a Mackenzie report green hydrogen can contribute up to 20 to 40% in reducing the carbon emission has made the market for Indian government increasingly attractive irrespective of the bottlenecks surrounding the idea which is still in its initial stages of initiation.

Although the idea of green hydrogen replacing fossil fuels is a futuristic thought and idea, it is not very far-fetched as the work on the same has begun taking place in various places and is at different stages of implementation. However, this idea comes with its own challenges and difficulties and one of the major challenges regarding this idea is one of the storages of the green hydrogen. The pure green hydrogen is highly inflammable and needs to be stored at a temperature of -253 degree Celsius which makes the storage and transportation of hydrogen extremely difficult. Thus, another method can be used to make the storage and transportation of the green hydrogen easy which is by converting the green hydrogen to green ammonia and then converting it back to green hydrogen which increases the costs for production of green hydrogen. However, due to the increased focus of the people around the globe on the green hydrogen, there are various drastic positive developments taking place in this sector and making it viable for investment with the support that many governments are showing in this respect.

India with its geo-strategic positions is a very attractive place for investment in the green and clean energy and thus has shown even more of a interest in joining this bandwagon of green hydrogen and rightfully so as the centre announced major policy changes towards the production of the green hydrogen like the finance minister of India, Nirmala Sitaraman, announcing the National Hydrogen energy Mission which aims to produce green hydrogen with green and clean energy which is linked to India’s growing capacity of renewable energy, and also allocated a sum of 1500 Crores to give accept and give a boost to the developments related to green hydrogen taking place in India which stands a bit farther apart from its Asian- Pacific counterparts like Japan, South Korea and Singapore. In regard to this, India has recently had major development with Mukesh Ambani, India’s wealthiest person announcing the development of a giga factory for the production of the green hydrogen and though India has had a few major developments in this field, it still has a long way to conquer.