World shipping will go green within around 10 years, says R K Singh
India has the potential to be one of the biggest manufacturers of green hydrogen in the world, Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy R. K. Singh said at a day-long conference on “Green Hydrogen Pilots in India”.
“We have set up a huge ecosystem for renewable energy. Our pace of capacity addition in renewable energy is one of the fastest in the world,” he said at the conference hosted by NTPC Ltd in New Delhi on 5 Sept 2023.
“Our cost of making renewable energy and our cost of producing green hydrogen will be one of the lowest in the world.”
Singh said that India will emerge as a huge exporter and the world will come to follow our approach on green hydrogen.
“When they say clean hydrogen, these countries mean hydrogen made from natural gas, resulting in emission of 11 kgs of hydrogen for every kilogram of hydrogen. They wanted us to stop using the term green hydrogen as well, but we stuck to our line. The world will by and large follow this approach.”
Speaking about the environment, the Minister said that India’s contribution to the global carbon dioxide load is just 4% while our population is 17%.
“But we believe in the environment. This is why we have emerged as a leader in energy transition. Our motivation in pivoting towards Green Hydrogen has been to become energy-independent and our concern for the environment.”
The Minister informed gave an overview of ongoing green hydrogen pilots and steps being taken by India in this direction.
“Many green hydrogen pilots are going on in India and across the world. We have pilots for green steel and in heavy duty transportation. Electric mobility is not viable for long distance heavy mobility; hence hydrogen or ammonia is the answer.
“In shipping, around the world, countries are making some ships ready. World shipping will go green within around 10 years. So, we have to emerge as refuelling destination for all green ships, since we can provide them green hydrogen or green ammonia or whatever fuel they want at the lowest cost.
“We have to prepare bunkers at shipyards and also have pilots for green shipping on our own. We are in talks with the Ministry of Shipping, to take this forward.”
The Minister informed that India will come out with a pilot for green hydrogen or green ammonia for storage for round-the-clock renewable energy.
“These pilots are starting points at transforming the sector, moving away from fossil fuels. For example, take steel; we import the bulk of our coking coal requirements.
“But there is a simpler process – direct reduction using hydrogen. That is the direction to go. We are one of the biggest manufacturers of steel in the world, we aim to continue to be so, only that we will need to transform our steel industry and we will have to move in this direction.”
Singh opined that most of the methods of running the pilots are already commercially viable.
“There are already companies which have developed turbines which can use hydrogen or ammonia for making electricity. These pilots are actually initial bids, and I believe we can replicate them on a larger scale for round-the-clock renewable energy,” said Singh.
“This will free us at one stroke from the problem of going for large scale imports of lithium batteries till we have our own manufacturing capacity. This will be entirely homegrown and we can start off from the word go.
“This is absolutely necessary, since we have demand growing and we need capacities at a rapid pace. Given the pace at which we are growing, this is the solution: round-the-clock renewable energy using green hydrogen as storage.”
The Minister said that the pilot for long-distance heavy mobility can be structured in a way so that we provide refuelling points and we say that these routes are earmarked for heavy mobility using hydrogen.
He continued, “If we give Viability Gap Funding in first or second rounds, we would not need it for third year or beyond. If we have to make it successful, we have to make it commercially viable. Commercial structuring is key to making it a success.”
The Minister said, “The world is changing, and the difference this time is that we are at the vanguard of this change. We are leading this change, we are leading the world.” Fiinews.com
