Role of Hydrogen in Decarbonisation in Indian Context : A Perspective
Arundhati Mukherjee
Deputy General Manager(C&I) , PPG, CMM, Damodar Valley Corporation, Kolkata/ Control& Instrumentation Engineer/MBA Power Management/Published Author/Writer/Interested in ESG, Climate Finance & Sustainability
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The decarbonisation goal is?global, signed in the Paris Agreement. The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commits all countries to keep global mean temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and to make efforts to limit the temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. For the first time in history, all countries recognize the need to peak global greenhouse gas emissions at the earliest and to fully decarbonize their economies during this century to achieve net-zero global greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. As long as we emit more than we capture or offset through carbon sinks (such as forests), concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will keep rising, and the climate will keep warming. ?The three principles being followed in the effort to create a zero-carbon future are: (a) planning ahead for a future with zero emissions, (b) getting carbon prices and policies right, and (c) smoothing the transition.
Based on the consensus of 830 scientists, engineers, and economists from over 80 countries and formally endorsed by the governments of 194 countries the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified many technically feasible pathways to reach carbon neutrality by the end of the century. Those pathways rely on four pillars
1.?????Decarbonization of generation of electricity by going into renewable and Carbon Capture and?or sequestration. Decreasing carbon intensity of global electricity production to near zero around 2050 is at the core of the decarbonization transition. This objective implies that both high-income countries and emerging economies (such as China, India, and South Africa) would have to decarbonize electricity around midcentury.
2.?????Switching from fossil fuel to low-carbon electricity will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in energy-intensive sectors, such as transportation, building, and industry.
3.??????Boosting energy efficiency can reduce emissions, make electrification easier, and save on energy bills.
4.?????Preservation and increase of natural carbon sinks ie preventing deforestation and increasing?reforestation .
India Decarbonization Strategies
?Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a target of 2047 on India’s 100th Independence Day—to achieve self-reliance in energy production through a mix of electric mobility, gas-based economy, and doping ethanol in petrol to make the country a hub for hydrogen production.
At the India-Japan Webinar on De-carbonisation , Mr. Sanjay Kumar Verma, Ambassador of India to Japan, said that 38% of India’s total installed electricity generation is based on renewables. This is about 136 Giga Watts now, and we expect to reach a target of 175 GW by next year and 450GW by 2030. Therefore, he said that hydrogen can play a critical role as a clean fuel in achieving this ambitious goal: Exploring the Hydrogen Prospects and Innovative Technologies, Eminent Experts, Scientists, and Technocrats from India and Japan discussed the most recent innovations, trends, concerns, and solutions adopted in the field of decarbonisation and promotion of Hydrogen based technologies. The webinar jointly organized by the Embassy of India in Japan, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India along with The Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Japan, and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India, on 19th?April 2021 brought together several experts in the field from the two countries.
According to him “Japan is the first country to formulate a basic hydrogen strategy. Hydrogen is included in the fifth Energy plan of Japan. The country thus has a good ecosystem for R&D and commercialization, which could be used by the Scientific and Commercial Communities of the two countries. India and Japan have strategic relationships, and this has to be elevated to a strategic partnership enabling sharing of knowledge without any inhibition on Hydrogen and utilization of H2 in future,”
India has to look at energy storage options which are green, unlike batteries and Hydrogen certainly is a very good candidate. DST, GoI has initiated several programmes to develop technologies to reduce the cost of hydrogen production, distribution, storage, diversify the feedstock available for hydrogen production, for example, biomass, agricultural waste and so on. DST has supported about 30 projects in last few years related to Hydrogen production, distribution, and storage at a cost of 5 Million US$, looking into new catalysts like producing hydrogen from water splitting ie Electrolysis.
India hosted the International Climate Summit 2021 in September’21with the focus on making India the new global hub of green hydrogen and its quest of becoming a leader in renewable energy. The summit was organised by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) in collaboration with the Central government’s Department of Science & Technology, Environment, Forest & Climate change, CSIR, and the NITI Aayog. Norway was the partner country for the summit. Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy Tina Bru, who addressed the summit, virtually said, “Green hydrogen has the potential to release low to zero-emission solutions in the transportation, industry, and shipping sectors, thus opening up new opportunities and several green jobs.” She continued, “I am certain that an increase of hydrogen in the energy mix will be important to reduce greenhouse emissions globally. Closer collaboration between Indian and Norwegian companies can accelerate our steps to a common low-emission future.” She added, “Climate change has no borders and the common challenge is to cut emissions, the whole world needs to come together and cooperate transcending borders.”
?The summit witnessed various stakeholders putting forth their views and promising collective efforts to devise solutions pertaining to hydrogen and its applications as a green fuel. Prime Minister’s this year’s Independence Day speech was played, where he announced the Central government’s decision to set up the National Hydrogen Mission, aimed at making India the new global hub and exporter of green hydrogen.?
The Minister added, “Creation of new hydrogen, carbon capture, use and storage technology hubs (CCUS) hubs will offer a noteworthy value transition to net-zero emissions. With CCUS hubs, we can achieve the least-cost low-carbon hydrogen production. They can be retrofitted to existing power and industrial plants. CCUS hubs have the potential to tackle emissions in sectors like cement, iron and steel or chemicals, where other technology options are limited. They will offer the potential to balance emissions that are unavoidable or technically difficult to abate. Investment in these hubs will also be beneficial in the creation of jobs, encouraging innovation, and enhancing skills and training efforts.” Singh launched the National Hydrogen Portal www.greenhydrogen-India.com. This platform will become a one-stop information source for research, production, storage, transportation, and application of hydrogen across the country and technology..
?Reliance Industries has started developing the green energy complex in Jamnagar with an investment of Rs 75,000 crore. Ambani called for investment in smart microgrids, efficient storage solutions, and smart meters so that people and communities would become both consumers and producers of energy. Ambani said that green hydrogen and zero-carbon energy will play a fundamental role in the world’s decarbonisation plans. He also outlined the company’s plan to become a net-zero carbon company by 2035, in line with India’s target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The company will work on bringing down the cost of Green Hydrogen to $1/kg in the next decade. It will set up a renewable capacity of at least 100GW by 2030.
A raft of Indian firms, including NTPC Renewable Energy, have forayed into green hydrogen play. The NTPC unit is setting up India’s largest solar park of 4.75 GW in Gujarat and plans to make green hydrogen there on a commercial scale. NTPC has also called bids for setting up a pilot project for mixing green hydrogen with natural gas for the city gas distribution network. Input requirements are in place to drive production cost down with more than half of 817 GW of India’s electricity requirement is to be met from clean energy by 2030.
Building on the National Action Plan on?Climate?Change, the Government of India has initiated several National missions. Other than the deployment targets and incentive mechanisms, these missions are towards R&D. These National Missions includes:
?Importance of Hydrogen and global perspective
The pressing need today is to meet the rising energy demand, decarbonization of various sectors, providing energy security and having sustainable growth .
Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier, which has the potential to address several energy sector
related challenges and technically from the application point of view can substitute the conventional fuels. Hydrogen with its abundance, high energy density, better combustion characteristics, nonpolluting nature etc.have vast advantages over the conventional fuels
Hydrogen is a clean fuel that, when consumed in a fuel cell, produces only water. Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestic resources, such as natural gas, nuclear power, biomass, and renewable power like solar and wind. These qualities make it an attractive fuel option for transportation and electricity generation applications. It can be used in cars, in houses, for portable power, and in many more applications.
Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be used to store, move, and deliver energy produced from other sources.
Today, hydrogen fuel can be produced through several methods. The most common methods today are natural gas reforming (a thermal process), and electrolysis. Other methods include solar-driven and biological processes.
In order to limit the increase of the global average temperature to 2oC, compared to pre-industrial levels, as the agreement establishes, the production of green hydrogen must correspond to 18% of the global energy in 2050.
·????????By 2030, the annual generation of Hydrogen in the world will be 90 GW.
·????????By 2030, the annual energy generation from electrolysis in Europe will increase from 0.1 GW to 40 GW per year.
·????????By 2030, € 430 billion will be invested in the entire production chain for green hydrogen in Europe.
WHAT IS GREEN HYDROGEN
Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyzer powered by electricity from green energy sources such as wind and solar. The green hydrogen play looks like an ideal solution to help India meet its energy needs with most parts of India receiving 4-7 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of solar energy per square metre per day. India’s large landmass and low wind and solar tariff can be leveraged to produce low-cost green hydrogen and ammonia for exports.
Nowadays, green hydrogen is two to three times more expensive than blue hydrogen. It is estimated that the production costs for green hydrogen could fall by up to 62% until 2030, to something close to a level from US$ 1.4 to US$ 2.3 per kg. If this occurs, the parity between the cost of green hydrogen and the one of grey hydrogen can happen somewhere between 2028 and 2034 – with projections below US$ 1 per kg in 2040.
Advantages of Green hydrogen for distribution and storage.
Green hydrogen is an advantageous and safe alternative for storing excess amounts of wind and solar energy. It is just necessary to direct what is left of them to perform electrolysis, generate hydrogen gas and store it. It is worth stressing out that hydrogen can also be generated by other processes such as biomass reformation and gasification. In addition to avoiding the waste of clean energy, this conversion is a way of maintaining regularity in the supply of two types of energy, whose production capacity fluctuates according to changes in the environment.
?Advantages of Green hydrogen for Transportation
The transportation sector generates 24% of the global CO2?emissions due to the burning of fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel oil. Of this amount, ? are emitted by cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles. For this reason, over then 20 countries are working in order to bring the sales of polluting vehicles to zero by 2035.
The global automotive industry’s goals are to have 4.5 million vehicles powered by clean battery in circulation by 2030 – with China, Japan and South Korea ahead. In parallel, the construction of 10.5 thousand hydrogen filling stations is projected for this new automotive fleet.
In maritime transportation, the green hydrogen’ synthesis produces the green ammonia, that can propel cargo ships, being the best cost-benefit result for the decarbonization of containers traffic until 2030.
For the aviation sector, the challenge is to develop a technology that is capable of propelling from small to large aircrafts with liquid hydrogen. Another option is to replace aviation kerosene with synthetic fuels, produced from green hydrogen, which emit less carbon.
Global trends for Hydrogen as an important component for the future as a Decarbonization strategy.
Global policies are being implemented in order to reduce the costs for production, distribution and application of green hydrogen. The necessity of meeting the decarbonization goals can make electrolysis approximately 40% cheaper by 2030.
·????????In 2021, there are over 200 projects related to green hydrogen, in more than 30 countries.
·????????In 2021, the Hydrogen Council is made up of 109 global companies, with a combined capital of US$ 6.8 trillion.
·????????Countries like Germany, South Korea, Japan, China, France, USA and the United Kingdom lead the sector in terms of investments and innovation.
·????????In 2020, most of the projects (85%) were in Europe, Asia and Australia.
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Prospect of Carbon Capture and Storage and role of hydrogen in Thermal Power Plants in India
Concerns due to anthropogenically forced climate change owing to emissions of CO2 are now well accepted and have resulted in several initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is a process of capturing waste CO2 from large point sources, such as fossil fuel stations, so that it will not enter the atmosphere. CCS is seen a crucial climate protection technology for coal-rich countries like India having potential in massively reducing CO2 emission as compared to any other existing technology. As third largest producer of coal and fourth largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter, India's total emissions are ?7% of global emissions and is increasing at 4.5% per annum. India’s current and expected future emissions are sufficiently massive to have an adverse effect on global mitigation efforts. The IPCC studied that without CCS, the price of achieving long-run climate goals is almost 140% more expensive. However, India has been taking a cautious approach towards CCS technology due to various factors.
CCS is described as the only clean technology capable of de-carbonizing industry-steel, chemicals, cement, fertilizers, pulp and paper, coal and gas-fired powered generation. To date, more than 220 million tonnes of anthropogenic CO2 has been safely and permanently injected deep underground. In Asia and the Pacific (APAC), CCS facilities are in varying stages of development including 8 in China. On a like-for-like basis, CCS is cheaper than intermittent renewable, and costs continue to fall.
The portfolio of CCS facilities is much more diverse, including applications in coalfired
power, steel manufacture, chemical and gas production and Bio-energy coupled CCS (BECCS). USA, Canada and Brazil are champions in enhanced oil recovery projects through carbon sequestration with more than hundreds of projects worldwide. Capture technologies are currently employed widely at scale globally. Costs for employing CCS are falling rapidly as new facilities come on stream while next generation technologies are unleashed.
?India is one among 24 developing countries that are having CCS activity, recognizing the importance of CCS for energy security. There is marginal interest in domestic demonstration of the technology in India because of the concerns about the public’s reaction to underground CO2 storage, poor geological CO2 storage data, higher cost and technical uncertainties associated with CCS technologies. A study?though inconclusive, shows that on-shore and off-shore deep saline formations, basalt formation traps ,unmineable coal seams ,depleted oil and gas reservoirs and in deep coal seams are probable storage points. The storage potential in India is poorly defined with only a few broad assessments completed. Comprehensive national study on Indian storage basins is needed.
?National Aluminum Company (NALCO), ONGC, Bharat heavy Electrical Ltd. (BHEL) and APGENCO are some industries which are in early stages of setting up facilities associated with CCS. The NTPC has already tested a pilot project to sequester CO2 in open pond using algal technology. National Aluminum Co. (NALCO), Orissa has successfully commissioned a pilot-cum-demonstration CO2 sequestration plant. Indian fertilizer sector has adopted carbon capture technology. The captured CO2 is said to be of 99% purity which will be recycled again to be used in the production of urea from ammonia.
The challenges associated with the commercial use of CCS in India are identified and listed below.
?? Lack of R&D effort: Along with its research phase, its potential estimation of conversion into fuel or either its geo sequestration (potential site estimation) plays an important role.
?? Need for comprehensive national study on Geological storage: The comprehensive geological assessment for CO2 storage potential are yet to be studied in India.
?? Energy penalty: CCS requires additional energy input and India's power requirement is yet to be fulfilled. Thus, energy penalty plays as barrier in India.
?? Lack of financing and inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI): Implementation of costly CCS technologies require financial incentives from local and central governments in India and good governance polities enabling to attract foreign FDI for the same
.? Environmental and legal concerns: Like land acquisition, ground water contamination, fear of CO2 leakage.
?? Cost scenario: Even after development for over 30 years, CCS technology is still proven costly to developing countries like India.
?? Political and policy making: India is world’s largest democracy and have 1.3 billion population. A slight increment in cost of electricity due to implementation of CCS and subsequent change in policy may cause political instability.
?? Public opinion: Being the largest democracy and with less concern to the environment and clean energy,regular interaction with the common people is necessary before implementing large CCS plants in India.
?? Foreign policies: Foreign policies have to be understood before installing any large CCS project in collaboration with foreign companies.
?The following actions are needed ?for successful implementation of commercial CCS plants in India.
?·????????Policy & Regulatory Framework:
·????????Identification of Suitable CO2 Storage
·?????????Improvement and Cost Reduction of Capture Technologies.
·????????Development of CO2 Transport Infrastructure:
·????????The strategy Improvement and Cost Reduction of Capture Technology
?Reduction in electricity cost from power plants equipped with capture through continued technology development, demonstration of CO2 capture systems at pilot scale in industrial applications, translate research into novel capture technologies and power generation cycles that will dramatically lower the cost of capture and resource consumption, and increase of R&D collaboration among nations to further decrease the electricity cost and resource footprint of fossil-fuel plants equipped with capture.
The potential combined use of hydrogen and CCS technology.
??Most hydrogen is currently being produced via steam-methane (from natural gas) reforming, which produces hydrogen and CO2. As long as we release this CO2 into the air, we call this product 'grey hydrogen'. But there is a solution by employing CCS. If the CO2 from this process is capture and stored, the hydrogen produced is also CO2-neutral. This hydrogen is often called 'blue hydrogen'. Blue hydrogen is not really blue, but certainly not grey! Netherlands, Japan,
Australia, UK, Ireland are exploring this technology further.
?For the strategy Improvement and Cost Reduction of Capture Technology encouraging for efficient development of CO2 transport infrastructure, ensuring that laws and?regulations are suitable for pipelines and shipping, foster a commercial environment for CO2 transport and?its geological storage, and reduce the cost and risk of pipeline transport by sharing knowledge gained from experience and developing common methodologies.
?CONCLUSION
Thus it transpires that hydrogen is the game changer in the coming days for storage solution as well as in the mobility sector to realize our goal for net zero carbon emission by 2050 . It will play a major role in transition to?decarbonization. Thus India is all set to move towards hydrogen economy.
Hydrogen economy is?an economy that relies on hydrogen as the commercial fuel that would deliver a substantial fraction of a nation's energy and services. This vision can become a reality if hydrogen can be produced from domestic energy sources economically and in an environmental-friendly manner.
?The Government of India has allotted Rs 25 crore in the Union Budget 2021–22 for the research and development in hydrogen energy and intends to produce three-fourths of its hydrogen from renewable resources by 2050.?The broad objective of the Hydrogen mission is to scale up Green Hydrogen production and utilisation and to align India’s efforts with global best practices in technology, policy and regulation.
So successful implementation of this vision depends on overcoming the barriers and on the various stake holders, their initiatives, investment, policies and framework , collaborative efforts, knowledge sharing , research and development towards economical production and environment friendly efforts.
References:
1.India Country Status Report on Hydrogen and Fuel Cells by DST
2.National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap?by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, India.\
?3. International Energy Agency report on “The future of hydrogen Seizing today’s opportunities”
?4.The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs: The National?????Academies Press
5.Carbon capture and sequestration potential in India: A comprehensive review Abhishek?
?Gupta, Akshoy Paul from Science Direct
6. Advances of Carbon Capture and Storage in Coal-Based Power Generating Units in an
Indian Context ,Energies.www.mdpi.com
7.Pic credit :To rightful owner
?8.Internet.
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