Government meets academia and industry to steer R&D projects under National Green Hydrogen Mission

The Union Minister for Power and New & Renewable Energy Shri R. K. Singh chaired a meeting on Green Hydrogen R&D Scheme of the Government in New Delhi today, February 22, 2024. Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India Shri Ajay Sood; Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) Shri Bhupinder Singh Bhalla; Joint Secretary, MNRE Shri Ajay Yadav; and government, academia and industry representatives from SECI, NCL, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IISc, NISE, BPCL, IIT Roorkee, IOCL, IIT Indore, IIT Patna, IIT Kharagpur, TERI, IIT Kanpur, Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, DRDO, IIT Ropar, CSIR, HAI, BHEL, BARC, BPCL and private industry representatives attended the meeting in person and through video conferencing.

The Minister said that research efforts under the Mission should be focussed to identify primary areas of research, give necessary support to research institutions, produce necessary technologies and bring them to fruition.

Underlining the need to identify the priority areas, the Minister said that institutions in different fields of expertise need to come together to collaborate and work on identified priority areas.

The Power and New & Renewable Energy Minister said that increasing efficiency of electrolyzers is a key aspect which needs to be looked into, in order to bring down the cost of Green Hydrogen. We should also explore less costly alternatives for producing and transporting Green Hydrogen, added the Minister.

The Minister informed the industry and research community that a few companies are already working on Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) modifications to make them run on Hydrogen derivatives. It was also stated that sea-water electrolysis to produce Green Hydrogen is also a promising area of research to bring down cost of production and improve scalability.The Minister said that consortiums could be formed for carrying out research in various areas of Green Hydrogen value chain.

The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy made a presentation on the initial set of more than 40 problem statements which have been identified for consideration under the Mission, under four heads namely, production; storage & transport; applications; and safety, cross-cutting analysis & integration. The problem statements were shared with the stakeholders present, followed by a discussion on what the priority areas for the first round of R&D projects could be.

It was informed that the R&D projects under National Green Hydrogen Mission comprise Mission Mode projects of 0 – 5 years horizon, Grand Challenge projects of 0 – 8 years horizon, and Blue Sky projects of 0 – 15 years horizon. Centres of Excellence too would be identified and supported under the Mission. However, in the initial phase, focus would be on Mission Mode projects.