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India Unveils Hydrogen Plan to Speed Shift From Fossil Fuels (bloomberg.com) 138

India unveiled its hydrogen roadmap, offering incentives for investors to produce the fuel at low costs and help the nation shift away from its reliance on fossil fuels. From a report: The first part of the plan announced Thursday offers free transmission of renewable electricity from one state to the other for the production of hydrogen and ammonia, helping drive down costs for an industry that's already winning support from billionaires like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. The government is considering offering subsidies and obliging oil refineries and fertilizer plants to use the fuel in the second phase, which is still being prepared, Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh said Wednesday.

Green hydrogen, made from water and renewable electricity, will likely play a major role in cutting emissions globally, offering a route to decarbonization for heavy industries like steel and cement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government aims to make India -- one of the largest importers of oil and coal -- a global hub for production and export of hydrogen, even though the fuel is still a long way from being commercially viable. "The mission aims to aid the government in meeting its climate targets and making India a green hydrogen hub," the power ministry said in a statement. It will also help meet a target of producing 5 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030, it said.

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India Unveils Hydrogen Plan to Speed Shift From Fossil Fuels

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  • What is missing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Thursday February 17, 2022 @02:36PM (#62277397) Homepage
    In reading that what is missing is what they expect to use the hydrogen for. Hydrogen is worth considering for some applications such as ocean going shipping and aircraft but quite simply does not stack up for use in cars and smaller vehicles. I would suggest that what India needs is not hydrogen infrastructure but clean electricity generation to replace coal power generation.
    • Story doesn't talk about cars. It says: "The government is considering offering subsidies and obliging oil refineries and fertilizer plants to use the fuel in the second phase, which is still being prepared, Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh said Wednesday. Green hydrogen, made from water and renewable electricity, will likely play a major role in cutting emissions globally, offering a route to decarbonization for heavy industries like steel and cement."
      • by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Fair point but they fail to say how the hydrogen is used by those industries. If it is being burnt to generate high temperatures then it would simply make more sense to transport electricity to those sites from clean energy sources and use that to make hydrogen on site to use directly than create the hydrogen off site and try and transport to such sites. Electric cables are far cheaper than hydrogen rated pipes or roads with hydrogen rated tankers on them.
        • Not sure about cement, but for fertilizer it is combined with N from air to make NH3, ammonia, a key ingredient in fertilizer. This link shows how. https://www.europeanfiles.eu/c... [europeanfiles.eu] The article also discusses how ammonia can be a store of energy. Not surprising, the big fertilizer plant in west tx blew big time and of course people make bombs from the stuff. Ammonia stores alot of energy.
    • A couple million tons could be used for their nitrogen fertilizer production alone.

    • The summary says it's for industrial use and names a few: steel, cement, refineries, fertilizer plants.

      I got into a discussion about this on another site not long ago. I thought H2 *could* work on ships and it was pointed out that the same inefficiencies that affect cars would affect ships too. The thing to keep in mind is that if you use electricity directly, electric engines are like 92% efficient in using the energy; but if you have to use that same energy for electrolysis, then storage & transport
      • by ukoda ( 537183 )
        Yes, it is unclear if they are proposing to ship hydrogen to industrial sites, which I think is a bad idea, or if they will make it on site which has merits. If they make it on site from electricity then hydrogen is just an intermediate step and the process would be better called electric than hydrogen.

        For ships and aircraft the key would be to generate the hydrogen at the port or airport so at least you are not dealing with all the shipping and storage loses. It really only makes possible sense now fo
  • India keeps making pronouncements but progress on the ground is slow. India wanted to ban ICE vehicles by 2030 but EV adoption is too low even though India had EVs in the market before Tesla launched. The issue is power is expensive in India. Expensive power is already holding back India's industrialization. Makes no sense to slow down electricity production growth by trying to be green. India should go full blast on coal power stations, nuclear power stations as well as renewable power plants.
  • by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday February 17, 2022 @03:28PM (#62277587) Homepage Journal

    https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov]

    If we move to hydrogen as a major transportation fuel, most of it will be made from natural gas and coal, as it's much cheaper than other methods. The whole push for hydrogen is all about trying to keep the same business model that we have today with a good bit of greenwashing.

    • by G00F ( 241765 )

      right, more than 95% of our hydrogen is produced using nat gas + energy, with carbon being expelled. And we would have to make 1000x more hydrogen going down this path.

      The Oil/Auto industry has wanted this solution, funded, and tried preventing alternatives. In some ways its the best as all the supply chains remain the same. (including getting hydrocarbons out of the ground)

      Splitting saltwater takes a crap ton of energy and would mean cost would go up up up if they seek to deviate away from this.

  • There are problems to be solved first.

    Dihydrogen is extremely hard to store. It is a very small molecule that moves through steel. It tends to escape from tanks and render them brittle. And if it escapes in the environment it is a greenhouse gas. Its effects on the greenhouse effect are being studied right now. It is also highly explosive. Also it is hard to move through today's pipes. Last time i heard an academic paper about that there were talks about putting a mix 95% fossil gas-5% hydrogen in gas pipes

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday February 17, 2022 @03:31PM (#62277613)

    It looks like they have been convinced by the petrol folks that this is a good idea. However, they will quickly end up stuck using hydrogen from natural gas, which is why Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani are so fond of the plan. I looked them up and surprise, they are both profit from selling natural gas.

    If they can get it work like they want then that is great but my understanding is that cheap polluting "blue hydrogen" will be too inexpensive to refuse. This is exactly why Koch on other fracking companies pushed for hydrogen cars.

  • India needs nuclear power if they want to be energy independent. That's because all nations need nuclear power to be energy independent.

    Last time I made a comment like this someone replied that it is impossible to build enough nuclear power plants quickly enough to matter. It doesn't take but a minute to see how quickly nuclear power plants were built before, and we can do that again. Back then we were motivated by a Cold War and a trade war over petroleum. Back then nuclear power was new, it's no longe

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

      Back then we were motivated by a Cold War and a trade war over petroleum.

      So free market mechanisms to be ignored, as in France in the early 1970s? It's fine if that is the requirement, but if that is the yardstick, then we need to be honest that this is the requirement.

Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.

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