Green hydrogen economy and opportunities for India

Abstract

With increasing numbers of vehicles on roads, India is facing the issue of large vehicular emissions. The burning of crude oil is the major issue behind these emissions. India doesn’t have enough resources to fulfill all the energy demands of vehicles and hence, imports crude oil from oil-rich countries. To tackle the issues associated with oil imports and vehicular emissions, there is a need to search for carbon-free alternate fuel that is available locally in sufficient quantity to meet India’s energy demands. The green economy is a new concept evolving and gaining attention worldwide, the concept focuses on sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions. Hydrogen is such a carbon-free fuel that can help to achieve the targets of the green economy and the best means to store energy for a long time. Hydrogen is a high energy content fuel and has about zero greenhouse gas emissions when used in fuel cells. Hydrogen is not directly available in free form, but it can be produced using electrolyzers and various other techniques. India’s continuously growing renewable power generation capacity gives the advantage to produce hydrogen from green sources like solar, and wind at the time of lower demand. The present review work focuses on the opportunities for India in green hydrogen production as the adaption of green hydrogen offers many benefits to India including energy security, and decarbonizing the transport sector.