Next 12-18 months are important for India to develop a clear hydrogen roadmap as it will determine where we will see ourselves in 2030, says Jitendra Goyal, General Manager - R&D, Toyota Kirloskar Motor.

Sharing the latest developments, Jitendra Goyal said, "Fuel cell technology has undergone a lot of improvements in terms of efficiency. Toyota has the technology to run more than 1,000 Km in one charge and the same is being implemented across Europe, US, and Japan. From the stationary point of view, we have produced plug and play fuel cell modules which can be used at the level of 1 MW generator. Notwithstanding the latest developments, commercialization continues to be a big challenge. If we don’t have a scale, it is difficult to reduce the cost of both hydrogen and fuel cell stands. Therefore, we need to make its usage wider. In India, we don’t need to necessarily reinvent the wheel but use the existing options by starting small and then replicating step by step. We need to have the right cost effective technologies and a mix of favorable policies.”

Goyal spoke at the panel discussion titled, ‘Hydrogen: The Next Clean Energy’ as a part of NextGen Chemicals & Petrochemicals Summit 2021 organized by Indian Chemical News from 7-8 October, 2021. The discussion was moderated by Amrit Deo Singh, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting. 

Talking about the challenges, Dr. Klaus Brun, Director - R&D, Elliott Group says, "Green hydrogen doesn’t have the required market value due to storage complexities. You need a fuel cell to convert it into electricity and thus from a storage perspective its efficiency is low. At the same time, blue hydrogen has a significant potential as leakages are avoidable. Hydrogen at the same time is difficult to compress and transport. It leaks easily and could lead to complexities during the movement. As a solution, pipeline infrastructure of natural gas could be used for transportation. CO2 can also be used as a carrier but again it has its own set of complexities.”

"It is a challenge not only for India but globally. Government has to play a supporting role by coming up with policies that encourage this transition. There are two ways to go about it. While policies will take years and we can’t speed it, international collaborations are also a way out. Financial institutions also have to open up to this new opportunity area. Since the R&D institutions are important to bring down costs, setting up centres of excellence on hydrogen should be prioritized at different universities. Funding from EU based organizations will not be just for Europe but any country that comes forward with innovative clean energy technologies,” says Dr. Sturle Harald Pedersen, Chairman, Greenstat Hydrogen India.

"We need to continuously look at the ways to bring down the carbon footprint. Renewables including hydrogen are emerging as options but we have to assess whether we will be able to completely replace coal and other non-renewable sources in the next 15 years. Also, rather than focusing completely on green hydrogen, we should also take the grey and blue hydrogen route before we achieve the 100% green hydrogen target. Among challenges, the cost of storage and transportation of hydrogen is more than producing it besides tariff related issues. Therefore, it is the time to be realistic and build infrastructure to fulfill our hydrogen aspirations. While we certainly have a conducive environment and policies, we should work towards overcoming the difficulties,” says Dr. R. K. Malhotra, Director General, Federation of Indian Petroleum Industry.

"We must relook at few of the lacking areas including supply chain besides a national roadmap is critical to shape our hydrogen aspirations. Again the scale of the supply chain will have to expand to include other options which have carbon neutrality. Green hydrogen alone might not be alone able to suffice the vast need, and therefore, we need to explore other forms of hydrogen too for meeting our needs. We need to rethink, redesign and readjust to accommodate our long-term energy requirements. There is no doubt that the potential for hydrogen in India is very high as it can become a growth engine for our economy. It is heartening to see that PM Modi himself has highlighted the role of gas based economy hydrogen as one of the key factors for achieving self-reliance,” says Anurag Pandey, Team Lead, Reliance Industries Ltd.

"As far as green hydrogen and clean energy is concerned, we started using hydrogen in 1995 through water hydrolysis. We were the first or second to use hydrogen instead of inert nitrogen for our plant. Now we are going on a bigger path. We are planning to produce hydrogen from coal as India is blessed with 350 billion tonnes of coal and the cost of hydrogen will be pretty low. While we are getting the hydrogen at $4-$5 per BTU, if we have our own mines, it can be brought down to $2-$3 per BTU. We need a holistic approach in India and better focus on converting coal to hydrogen as the solar energy and hydrogen through conversion from water is still a distant dream. We need a uniform power cost and one grid across India with the same tariff to achieve that. The day we mature to that level, we will see mushrooming of solar plants in western part of India. At JSPL, we are establishing a plant for conversion of coal into hydrogen which will be path breaking technology. It will be operational in the next two years,” says Vidya Rattan Sharma, MD, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd.

“Experimenting with hydrogen is a part of the process and one can’t conclude right away whether it would work or not because it is inconvenient at the moment, we can’t rule out its potential in the future. Anyways, we are in exciting times and green hydrogen is like elixir. We don’t have ant-dote for climate change but at least something to try. Government can play a role in taking the right decisions after due assessment,” said D. M. R. Panda, General Manager - Hydrogen, NTPC Limited.

“Transition to hydrogen appears complex and to achieve our targets, all stakeholders need to join hands. Yet a lot has happened in the last 10 years. Funding ecosystem has matured and there are companies commercially working towards this transition,” remarked Amrit Deo Singh, Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting.