Hydrogen Energy Mission

In News –The Union Finance Minister announced the launch of the Hydrogen Energy Mission during her budget speech.

About: Hydrogen Energy Mission

• It is proposed to launch in 2021-22 for generating hydrogen from green power sources.
• It is essential to decarbonise heavy industries like steel and cement, it also holds the key to clean electric mobility that doesn’t depend on rare minerals.

• Significance

• Green hydrogen energy is vital for India to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions.
• It is a clean-burning molecule, which can decarbonise a range of sectors including iron and steel, chemicals, and transportation.
• The initiative has the potential of transforming transportation.

What is Hydrogen?

• It is considered the future of clean and sustainable energy.
• It can be directly used as a fuel similar to natural gas or as input for fuel cells to generate electricity.
• The sources and processes by which hydrogen is derived, are categorised by colour tabs.
  • Hydrogen produced from fossil fuels is called grey hydrogen, this constitutes the bulk of the hydrogen produced today.
  •  Hydrogen generated from fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage options is called blue hydrogen.
  •  Hydrogen generated entirely from renewable power sources is called green hydrogen.
    • In the last process, electricity generated from renewable energy is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolyser.

Benefits –

• Experts believe hydrogen vehicles can be effective in long-haul trucking and other hard-to-electrify sectors such as shipping and long-haul air travel.
• Hydrogen is about two to three times as efficient as burning petrol because an electric chemical reaction is much more efficient than combustion.
• Hydrogen can act as an energy storage option, which would be essential to meet intermittencies (of renewable energy) in the future.
• It ensures regional and national energy security, access and availability.

Instances of Usage –

• Globally
  • Hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel source has a history spanning nearly 150 years.
  • In 1937, the German passenger airship LZ129 Hindenburg used hydrogen fuel to fly across the Atlantic.
  • In the late 1960s, hydrogen fuel cells helped power NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon.
  • South Korea and Japan are focussed on moving their automotive markets to hydrogen, and the potential of the fuel cell.
• Indian Scenario-
  • In October, Delhi became the first Indian city to operate buses running on hydrogen spiked compressed natural gas (H-CNG) in a six-month pilot project.
  • Power major NTPC Ltd is operating a pilot to run 10 hydrogen fuel cell-based electric buses and fuel cell electric cars in Leh and Delhi.
  • The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways late last year issued a notification proposing amendments to the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, to include safety evaluation standards for hydrogen fuel cell-based vehicles.

• Challenges :
  • A big barrier to the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has been a lack of fuelling station infrastructure..
    •  There are fewer than 500 operational hydrogen stations in the world today, mostly in Europe, followed by Japan and South Korea.
• Safety is seen as a concern and it is highly flammable.
• In terms of challenges to green hydrogen specifically, the cost of renewable electricity is the major problem.

Way Forward

• There is a need to reduce electrolyser costs and supply chain logistics.
  • This will require funding.
• Policymakers should also consider how to create legislative frameworks that facilitate the integration of the hydrogen-based sector.
• Public investments need to be strategized and channellised well.

Source: IE