The Prayas ePathshala

Exams आसान है !

Present circumstances:

On the nation’s 75th anniversary of independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced the National Hydrogen Mission, which aims to make India a centre for the production and export of green hydrogen.
On January 4, 2023, the Union Cabinet gave its blessing to this project, allocating an initial sum of Rs 19,744 crore ($2.3 billion) over the ensuing five years. By 2030, it intends to produce 5 MMT (million metric tonnes) yearly and boost the capacity of renewable energy by about 125 GW (giga watts).

Fueling with hydrogen:

Because hydrogen only occurs in combination with other elements, it must be extracted from naturally occurring things like water. Hydrogen is the most common element in nature (which is a combination of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom). Despite being a pure molecule, getting hydrogen demands a lot of energy.
It took the oil price shocks of the 1970s before the idea of hydrogen replacing fossil fuels began to gain serious consideration, despite nearly 150 years of research into hydrogen’s promise as a clean fuel source.
The sources and processes used to manufacture hydrogen are categorised using coloured tabs.
The majority of the hydrogen produced today is grey hydrogen, which comes from fossil fuels. Green hydrogen is created using electrolysers powered by renewable energy sources, whereas blue hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels with the option of carbon capture and storage.

Hydrogen coding based on production:

Government initiatives are mostly concentrated on producing green hydrogen.
However, green hydrogen is where the government is concentrating its efforts due to its potential to maximise the decarbonization of the energy sector and the usage of energy in end-use sectors like transportation, buildings, and industry.
The National Mission has a number of benefits that have been publicly stated, including savings of $12.5 billion on fuel imports, the averting of 50 MMTs of carbon dioxide emissions annually, new investments totaling $100 billion, and the creation of 6,000 000 green jobs. However, there are also a number of drawbacks.

Green hydrogen’s key challenges are:

The challenges of manufacturing and utilising green hydrogen can be categorised using the 4Es electrolysers, energy source, end use, and endogenous resources.
According to the IEA (International Energy Agency), 8 GW/year will be available for global electrolyser production as of 2021.
In order to achieve its 2030 goal, India will therefore need between 60 and 100 GW of electrolyser capacity, which is comparable to around 12 times the existing world production capacity.
Despite the fact that India has currently begun building electrolysers, the real numbers are relatively small. A further obstacle to India’s ability to expand its electrolyser production capacity may be access to vital minerals like nickel, platinum group metals, and rare earth metals like lanthanum, yttrium, and zirconium.
These resources are concentrated in countries like China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Chile, and Peru. Similar limitations apply to India’s ability to process these minerals.
In order to compete with other global players, India would need to establish large-scale manufacturing, advance knowledge, create geopolitical alliances for the acquisition of necessary minerals, and increase the overall technological and financial viability of electrolysers year over year.

Energy source complexity:

According to current estimates, a fully functional electrolysis machine would require 39 kWh of electricity to produce 1 kilogramme of hydrogen. It should be noted that this is a laboratory-tested figure, and an accurate practical figure is more in the range of 48 kWh per kg of hydrogen.
Renewable energy must be used as a power source to create green hydrogen. India now estimates a capacity of 125 GW of renewable energy to achieve its green hydrogen 2030 ambitions, in addition to the already proposed targets of 500 GW renewable energy capacity. Solar, wind, biopower, and small hydro have so far only been used to generate a portion of India’s estimated 175 GW of capacity.
The transmission capacity, which includes the ability to easily facilitate the cross-border exchange of power between states in addition to the generation capacity, is a vital necessity. In order to achieve this goal, India would need to generate close to 100 GW of total renewable energy capacity annually over the following seven years, as well as offer dispatch corridors and procedures.

End-use complexity:

The largest users of hydrogen today are the chemical sector, which produces ammonia for fertilisers, followed by the fuel desulfurization and hydrocracking processes in refineries.
It can serve as a source of heat for industry, especially in sectors like steel, cement, and aluminium production that are challenging to regulate and electrify. In the transportation sector, it can be used as fuel for heavy-duty vehicles, ships, and aircraft. The efficiency with which green hydrogen transforms one form of energy carrier into another in the final application will determine the scope of its usefulness.
For instance, it would not be practicable or cost-effective to have alternative energy carriers for the same use case when electricity may be used directly. Hydrogen’s potency in other substances like ammonia or methanol is only slightly lessened because it is a particularly combustible and volatile element. The price of hydrogen as a fuel will increase as safety standards for storage and transportation are developed. For later usage, green hydrogen is created and stored in a variety of methods.

Endogenous resource challenge:

One kilogramme of hydrogen is expected to be produced by electrolysis with nine litres of water.
India also requires a supply of around 50 billion litres of demineralized water, according to an independent assessment.
Many sections of India are already severely water strained, so solutions must be found to fulfil this growing water demand.
Desalination has been suggested, although this will not only increase the physical footprint of the required equipment but may also increase competition for land use, have an impact on biodiversity, and present challenges and limitations for where electrolysers can be located.
It would be challenging to strike a balance between being rich in water resources, abundant in renewable energy sources, and close to hydrogen demand (end-use) centres for the recommended green hydrogen hubs to be commercially feasible while incurring the fewest additional costs.

Conclusion:

In 2020, the globe produced about 90 MMT of hydrogen. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, by 2050, hydrogen and its derivatives would account for 12% of the world’s total energy consumption (IEA estimate: 530 MMT), with two-thirds coming from green hydrogen (IRENA).
The global levelized cost of producing green hydrogen now ranges between Rs 250-650/kg ($ 3-8/kg), although India intends to produce it for around Rs 100-150/kg ($ 1-2/kg) by 2030.
In order to address all of the aforementioned problems, India will need to act rapidly to cooperate across multiple institutional organisations, both public and private. India should take on this issue even if it is undoubtedly difficult.