Context: India has made significant commitments at COP26 towards climate action. These include fulfilling 50% of its energy requirement through renewable energy and bringing its non-fossil fuel energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030. All this will require huge investment in green technologies and big corporates are gearing up for this task.
Green Hydrogen
Hydrogen is also emerging as an important source of energy since it has zero carbon content and is a non-polluting source of energy in contrast to hydrocarbons that have net carbon content in the range of 75–85 per cent. By moving to a hydrogen economy, India can not only reduce imports of oil, coal, and natural gas, but will also be able to export hydrogen to other countries in Europe and Asia.
Green hydrogen has specific advantages.
Environment Friendly: Green Hydrogen as energy source is seen as the next big thing as its usage would lead to zero emissions
Potential to Decarbonise various sectors: It is a clean burning molecule, which can decarbonise a range of sectors including iron and steel, chemicals, and transportation.
Efficient utilization of Renewable Energy: Renewable energy that cannot be stored or used by the grid can be channelled to produce hydrogen.
Reduced Dependence on Rare Minerals: Green Hydrogen also holds the key to clean electric mobility that doesn’t depend on rare minerals. Green Hydrogen helps achieve long-term vision of reduced dependency on minerals and rare-earth element-based battery as energy storage.
Helps Achieve Paris Goal: Green hydrogen energy is vital for India to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions and ensure regional and national energy security, access and availability
Energy Security: Green energy helps reduce import dependency on fossil fuels
How Hydrogen based vehicles are better than Battery based Electric Vehicles?
EV still has dependence on Coal: India’s electricity grid is predominantly coal-based and will continue to be so, thus negating collateral benefits from a large-scale EV push — as coal will have to be burnt to generate the electricity that will power these vehicles
In several countries that have gone in for an EV push, much of the electricity is generated from renewables — in Norway for example, it is 99 per cent from hydroelectric power.
Applicable to multiple sectors: Experts believe hydrogen vehicles can be especially effective in long-haul trucking and other hard-to-electrify sectors such as shipping and long-haul air travel. Using heavy batteries in these applications would be counterproductive, especially for countries such as India, where the electricity grid is predominantly coal-fired.
Efficiency: Hydrogen based vehicles enables a refuelling time of just five minutes, compared to 30-45 minutes charging for a Battery based EV. Also, consumers get about five times better energy storage per unit volume and weight
Conclusion
The challenges of green technological development is different in different settings, however, following approaches needs to be adopted to attain heights of excellence.
Investing more in research and development in the sustainable technological development sector.
Giving impetus to new ideas and imbibing a culture of scientific approach in students through missions such as Atal innovation mission.
Supporting the start-ups in the green/sustainable technological sector by providing them tax concessions, less interest loans and providing platform for the market exposure such as green technological expo.
Can you answer the following question?
Green hydrogen energy technologies come with their own problems. Is India ready? Critically examine.
