The story of the Gondwana continental drift is worth a read. Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent that broke up about 180 million years ago. The continent eventually split into landmasses we recognize today: Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Yes, India, once was a part of this massive landmass and detached itself to join with the Asian plate. This grand collision gave rise to the formation of the Great Himalayas, silicates of which consumed massive amounts of CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere, thus, making it cooler. The Himalayas have forever played a contributing role in finding a balance out of the nature and also in maintaining a rich, stable climate for the Indian subcontinent. However, it is rather ironic how India, that once played such a key role in maintaining life on earth, today possesses an air filled with green house gases.
The urgency to take aggressive action to fight climate change has never been so greater in human history. Warming temperatures are causing unhealthy changes in weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature, besides posing serious risks to all forms of life on the earth. Owing to abrupt disruptions in nature in recent years, water is fast becoming scarcer in more and more regions, droughts are stirring destructive dust storms across continents and expanding deserts are reducing land for growing food, costing billions of dollars to the humanity. In such a serious situation, Green Hydrogen appears to be an effective answer to all this.
A new report by NITI Aayog highlights that green hydrogen can substantially spur industrial decarbonisation and economic growth for India in the coming decades. Harnessing Green Hydrogen for deep decarbonisation provides a pathway to accelerate the emergence of a green hydrogen economy, which is critical for India to achieve its net-zero ambitions by 2070, set by PM Narendra Modi in the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
The National Hydrogen Mission came out of this resolve only, which aims to make India a hub for the production and export of green hydrogen. This also aims to make India energy independent before the country completes 100 years of its independence in 2047. Currently, the country spends over 160 billion dollar of foreign exchange every year for energy imports, which are likely to double in the next 15 years if remedial actions are not taken.
However, the need to achieve size and scale to push down costs of green hydrogen, is equally important. Given the right policies of the present dispensation at the Centre, India can emerge as the least cost producer and bring down the price of green hydrogen to one dollar per kg by 2030. While hydrogen can be produced from multiple sources, India’s distinct advantage in low-cost renewable electricity also lies in the fact that green hydrogen is set to emerge as the most cost-effective form as also suggested by the report. The hydrogen demand in India could grow more than fourfold by 2050, representing almost 10% of global demand. Given that the majority of this demand could be met with green hydrogen in the long term, the cumulative value of the green hydrogen market in India could reach US 8 billion dollar by 2030.
The encouraging aspect with India is that it has unique advantages of its unique ecosystem and the stage now appears to be set for the country to become a global champion in green hydrogen. In India, proactive collaboration among innovators, entrepreneurs and government agencies, green hydrogen has the potential to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, fight climate change and put the country on a path towards net-zero energy imports. The emerging situations are sure to help India export high-value green products also. In this way, India may become one of the first major economies to industrialise without carbonising. Green hydrogen produced by renewable energy through electrolysis of water, will be crucial for achieving decarbonisation of harder-to-abate sectors such as fertilisers, refining, methanol, maritime shipping, iron & steel and transport as green hydrogen can potentially provide a replacement of fossil fuels in industrial processes.
SHARE
