Private sector aggressively pursuing production of green hydrogen: Hardeep Singh Puri at G20 event

·     Petrol blended with 20 per cent of ethyl alcohol, also called ‘E20’, will be available at 1,000 outlets of oil marketing companies (OMCs) across the country, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG), Housing and Urban Affairs announced on June 14, 2023.

·     On green hydrogen, the Union minister said initially, the Hydrogen Mission’s targets of five million metric tonnes (mmt) per annum “looked ambitious and is ambitious”.According to his periodical review meetings with stakeholders, the minister is convinced that this goal might even be exceeded, provided the sectors get their “act together”.

·      The reason he cited is that the government has provided six centres where six different ministries will look at hydrogen production on their own, such as the steel ministry separately, the MoPNG separately, and so on.

·     In addition to incentivisation through the Hydrogen Mission with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore, the private sector is also pursuing green hydrogen aggressively.

·      There are private companies that have got billions of dollars of investment from outside, applied for land and manufacturing facilities for green hydrogen production, and contracted the supply of green ammonia to other parts of the world. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Odisha will likely be the first takers of green hydrogen and some of the locations chosen suffer from water scarcity. For electrolysis, about 9 kilograms (kg) of water is required per kg of hydrogen.

·       At the same event, International Energy Agency Director FatihBirol said, “Hydrogen is growing very strong and there is no country that is not looking at it very closely.” He called India a “hydrogen superpower”.