India should invest $1 billion in green hydrogen R&D by 2030: NITI Aayog study

Besides focusing on enhancing India’s manufacturing potential for green hydrogen, there is an urgent need to funnel resources in the R&D space concentrating on electrolysers, fuel cells and associated components, a NITI Aayog study said on Friday.

The think tank has favoured creating a corpus of $1 billion by 2030 for investing in various R&D initiatives related to green hydrogen.

The R&D efforts should focus on efficiency improvement, cost reduction, stack life extension, and development of a technology less dependent on metal and material imports. This programme can be a collaborative effort by key industry players and renowned academic institutions, the study said.

“India should invest $1 billion in R&D by 2030 to catalyse the development of commercial green hydrogen technologies across the value chain. Instead of blanket funding of research institutions, the government can implement a focused and commercial results-oriented R&D programme with well defined targets and rewards/ incentives for commercial technology development,” the study suggested.

R&D initiatives

Accordingly, NITI Aayog has recommended a mission mode R&D drive in collaboration with the industries. It will focus on early-stage R&D to enable technologies that reduces the cost of hydrogen delivery and dispensing, as well as manufacturing techniques to reduce the cost of automotive fuel cell stacks at high volume.

Another key area is securing critical mineral supply either through indigenous development or global collaboration for the supply chain of nickel, zirconium, lanthanum, yttrium, platinum, iridium and other key raw materials used in electrolysers.

“R&D should look to reduce the costs of manufacturing electrolyser components, using advanced techniques such as additive manufacturing. Compression of hydrogen to 875 Bar using electrochemical cells and metal hydride materials, improving efficiency and reducing the capital cost of hydrogen liquefaction, using a vortex tube concept should be achieved,” Niti Aayog has suggested.

India’s advantage

The study pointed out that India’s distinct advantage in low-cost renewable energy (RE) generation makes green hydrogen the most competitive form of hydrogen in the long run. “This enables India to potentially be one of the most competitive producers of green hydrogen in the world. Green hydrogen can achieve cost parity with natural gas-based hydrogen (grey hydrogen) by 2030, if not before,” it added.

The study also focused on India’s manufacturing potential. “India may aim for 25 gigawatt (GW) of electrolysers by 2030, while also investing $1 billion in R&D to catalyse the development of commercial green hydrogen technologies across the value chain,” it added.

Radically improving the speed of regulatory clearances coupled with preferential treatment in public tenders will help catalyse local manufacturing. Grand challenges, public-private venture capital and financing test bench infrastructure could be part of the R&D investments.

Production cost

Another crucial issue is production cost. The study highlighted that the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis today is relatively high, between around $4.10-7 per kg depending on various technology choices and the associated soft costs. This makes it hard to compete with the existing cost of grey or brown hydrogen.

To reduce cost of production, the report said, “Specifically targeting duty waiver and reduction of the GST and T&D charges, the levelised cost of hydrogen (LCOH) can be reduced to around $3.2 per kg in the best case, making it closer to becoming competitive with grey hydrogen”.

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