Hydrogen’s appeal as a fuel is that it produces zero carbon when used as a fuel. But, of course, if a lot of carbon is produced during hydrogen production, that appeal would stand tarnished

With green hydrogen, India seems to be putting itself at the forefront of a significant economic paradigm shift for a change. India’s two richest industrialists, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, are investing tens of billions of dollars in green hydrogen. The government has announced a significant incentive programme for the green hydrogen industry to slash the cost of producing green hydrogen by 40-50%. And now, from different parts of the world, comes news of diverse applications of hydrogen to convert the gas from a lot of hot air, of the combustible kind, to boot, into a practical business proposition.

Hydrogen’s appeal as a fuel is that it produces zero carbon when used as a fuel. But, of course, if a lot of carbon is produced during hydrogen production, that appeal would stand tarnished. Therefore, it is vital to produce hydrogen without that generation process itself emitting greenhouse gases. Hydrogen produced in this fashion is called green hydrogen. Hydrogen, in whose generation oxides of carbon are produced and released into the atmosphere, is called grey hydrogen. Refineries tend to produce a lot of grey hydrogen. Grey hydrogen, the carbon dioxide whose generation is captured and stored, is called blue hydrogen. When methane is processed with heat to break down into hydrogen and carbon, retrieved as a solid, the resultant hydrogen is called turquoise hydrogen. These colour codes for hydrogen keep expanding, with hydrogen produced with nuclear power being called pink, and those from coal and lignite, via gas, called black and brown, respectively.

But hydrogen’s principal appeal is a solution to the intermittency of renewable power. The sun does not shine very bright for more than 5-6 hours. The wind does not blow strong all the time. When renewable power dries up, the system has to fall back on traditional thermal power. What this means is that using renewable power is quite costly. ‘Solar tariff drops to ₹ 2 per unit’ is a cheery headline to read. But to use that one unit of solar power, a lot more has to be spent by the utility. There is the integration cost. The grid frequency has to be kept stable when you draw in renewable power and back down thermal power. Now, thermal power has two components: the cost of the system being available to generate power for you and the cost of the fuel burnt when you draw on that available capacity. Now, when you back down thermal power, to accommodate renewable power, you have to keep paying the availability or capacity charge; it is only the fuel cost that is avoided. The cost of capacity and the cost of grid integration have to be added to the generation cost of renewable power to get the real cost of renewable power.

What if renewable power can be stored? Things change. If enough renewable power can be produced to meet both the demand during the time of generation and the demand during the period when the sun does not shine, and when the wind does not blow, then one can stop paying the capacity charge for thermal power. There are multiple ways to store power generated by renewable sources. Battery storage is one. Pumping water up to an altitude, from which it can later be run down to turn a turbine and generate power, is another — this is called stored hydropower. Hydrogen is another method.

Use the power generated by renewable sources to electrolyze water, splitting it into its constituent molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Then, use this hydrogen to generate energy. Hydrogen can be cooled under pressure to produce a liquid. It can be transported easily, shipped to distant shores, as Australia plans to, to Japan. It can be sent to fuel pumps and fill the tanks of cars and trucks.

Hydrogen can produce energy in two ways. Hydrogen is combustible and so can be used in an internal combustion engine. Or it can mix with oxygen in a so-called fuel cell to produce electricity and steam as its exhaust gas. That electricity, in turn, can power a motor to run a car or a truck. Given that one kg of hydrogen stores more energy than one kg of any storage battery, for long-range and heavy cargo movement, hydrogen fuel cell trucks beat battery-run electric vehicles hands down. Similarly, for aviation and for transport by water, as well, hydrogen is seen to be the green alternative to aviation turbine fuel and fuel oil.

Renault is right now testing a model of a car with an internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen instead of gasoline or diesel. Yamaha has produced an internal combustion engine that uses hydrogen as its fuel for Toyota. JCB is satisfied with its hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered excavator under development. Alstom has a hydrogen-fueled train in the works. East Japan Railway Company is ready to test drive its hydrogen-powered train.

Hydrogen has one major advantage over battery storage: you don’t need batteries and its ingredients, the likes of cobalt, lithium and other materials on whose supply chains, China has a stranglehold.

President Biden’s ill-fated infrastructure bill offered a subsidy of $6 per kg of green hydrogen. Without explicitly counting on any subsidy and relying on sheer scale and superior execution, Ambani plans to make hydrogen available at $1 per kg by 2030. The government has announced a policy that will waive all transmission fees for renewable power from its point of generation to wherever water is being split into hydrogen and oxygen. This, by itself, would make hydrogen production 40-50% cheaper, according to a senior Indian Oil Corp. executive.

India could well emerge as a prominent green hydrogen hub.

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