The Indian government has said it wants to be a “leading producer and supplier of green hydrogen in the world” and is investing accordingly.
The country’s location, abundant renewable energy production and large population could all benefit India’s green hydrogen plans.
“The government of India has done a phenomenal job in rolling out these incentives,” said Bikesh Ogra, managing director and CEO of the Jakson Green subsidiary of diesel generators and solar panel manufacturer Jakson Group, referring to the two strategic interventions for Incentives for the Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT), for electrolyzer production and hydrogen production respectively.
Jakson Group is trying to move away from its diesel generator origins and entered the solar industry in 2014. The company is now developing third-party solar projects, including in the international market, with projects in Africa and the Middle East. Half of Jakson Green’s revenues by 2024 will come from international operations, Ogra said.
Difficult to reduce
Jakson Green is now entering the green hydrogen industry, charged with decarbonising sectors where emissions are ‘hard to reduce’, such as shipping, aviation, long-haul trucking, steelmaking and ammonia production for fertilizer.
The company is already producing pilot-scale electrolyzers and aims to reach gigawatt scale by 2026.
The SIGHT program aims to establish 15 GW of green hydrogen electrolyser production capacity and state governments are offering incentives to attract potential electrolysis plants.
“Today, a total of about half a million tons of demand aggregation has been done by a number of very credible nodes,” Ogra said, but warned that the necessary infrastructure will take longer and be more cumbersome than developing the solar and wind energy industries of the country.
“Solar energy started in India in 2010 and by 2014 we already had grid parity,” said CEO of Jakson Green, referring to solar energy costing as much as grid power. Ogra expects that infrastructure construction will take “another five to seven years” to bridge the gap to replacing the conventional way of producing gray, fossil fuel-powered hydrogen. This would also apply to hydrogen fuel supplies for things like sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which aviation industry experts acknowledge cannot be achieved by biofuels alone.
Trial and error
The same will apply to the hydrogen supply required for green methanol for shipping. “So there is work to be done, but governments are encouraging real migration [off fossil fuels]with incentives being given all over the world,” said Ogra.
Regulatory frameworks for hydrogen need to be developed, and while the technology is rapidly maturing, trial and error does not always yield the expected results, meaning development plans need to be changed and adapted. Hurdles include international differences due to a lack of uniform global standards, such as with “the European way of looking at green hydrogen versus the Indian way,” Ogra said, referring to code standards and safety regulations, adding that everyone is still learning is.
Despite the difficult road ahead, Jakson Green boss is palpably positive about the prospects for the electrolyzer markets.
“We see a real increase in demand, perhaps around the second half of 2025,” he said, adding demand will continue to increase thereafter. “Right now we’re burning cash, but we’re burning it for a reason,” he said.
The reason is that India has embarked on a trial-and-error mission to collectively advance its hydrogen economy, with the government keen to achieve energy security and move away from its dependence on fossil fuel imports.
National goal
The Indian government’s National Green Hydrogen Mission strategy aims to set up pilot projects in sectors such as steel, shipping, aviation and ammonia production for fertilizers. There are also plans to support research and development, and expanding electrolyser production capacity is an important part of that approach.
So far, progress has been hampered by what Ogra calls a “timing mismatch” between demand and the policies that can drive it. Aviation and shipping, for example, are only beginning to meet decarbonization targets. Ogra reports that the potential demand for electrolyzers is “not something that translates on the ground.”
India also has a fair number of international energy giants with sufficient financial strength to build vertically integrated green hydrogen supply chains entirely on its own.
The largest of these, Adani Group, has joined forces with French energy and petroleum multinational TotalEnergies to commit to investing more than $50 billion in green hydrogen and its ecosystems by 2034. A first goal is to develop 1 million tons of hydrogen production capacity by 2030.
Production plans
Another major Indian player, Reliance Industries Limited, pledged around $8.5 billion in 2021 to set up a vertically integrated industrial cluster with gigafactories for manufacturing solar energy, energy storage, electrolyzers and fuel cells. The first phases of this ambitious site are being put into use. Reliance is investing in alkaline water production, proton exchange membrane (PEM) and more early stage electrolyzer production of anion exchange membrane. The Danish company Stiesdal is involved to accelerate the cost reduction and commercialization of PEM technology.
Jakson Green’s electrolyzer manufacturing efforts will initially include the production of five models of grid-scale alkaline electrolysers, but Ogra emphasized that the company is technology agnostic when it comes to electrolysis technology.
On PEM electrolysis, he said: “Personally, I, along with my technical team, believe that it may be premature to enter into partnerships as the technology is currently evolving.” The CEO pointed out that alkaline electrolysers have been around for a while and are suitable for grid-scale production, when they receive green power from the grid close to where the hydrogen will be used. Jakson is taking this approach for its pilot projects for green ammonia to decarbonize fertilizer, green ethanol and methanol for aviation and shipping, and green steel production. Ogra said there is a lot of traction in these sectors.
The current emphasis on alkaline electrolysis at Jakson has meant that the use of green hydrogen as an energy storage solution for renewable energy has not proven feasible. Ogra said Jakson’s initial attempts with that energy carrier application failed because the capital and operating expenses required for hydrogen storage and compression were very high.
Energy storage
Although PEM electrolyzers are still in their infancy, they appear to offer more promise for solar energy storage because they are lighter and can respond more quickly to energy fluctuations. Numerous studies have supported the idea of using PEM electrolysis to store renewable energy, for example in off-grid situations, and even on a small scale.
An example of this is the article “Independent electricity supply system with solar-powered hydrogen and fuel cells: is it possible to get rid of batteries?” published in The International Journal of Hydrogen Energyshowed how PEM electrolyzers, a small battery and fuel cells would enable hydrogen energy storage to outperform battery-only systems in off-grid applications.
Ogra said his company has an open mind when it comes to using PEM electrolysis for clean energy storage, adding that Jakson will take a wait-and-see approach and study the results of pilot projects and academic studies.
Alkaline electrolysis is the most mature approach for green hydrogen production, but Ogra acknowledged that price parity with fossil fuels is still a long way off for industrial applications. That means that, despite Jakson Green’s decarbonization ambitions, “hydrogen will not even account for 10% of the total revenue stream.”
“Going forward, two years, three years down the road, I assume it will go up to maybe 25% to 30%. By 2030 we should have an equal mix of hydrogen and other renewable energy projects that we do,” he said.
Some hydrogen industry commentators have compared the situation to the early days of the battery sector, which initially faced similar investment hurdles and required decisive industrial policies such as those of China, initially for the electrification of the transport sector.
Jakson Green’s long-term vision is to produce electrolyzers at a scale of more than gigawatts, and Ogra said the company is already in “advanced stages” of land acquisition.
“The whole idea is also to become an export hub for all global needs, including Europe, the US and the Middle East,” Ogra said, adding that this is only a matter of time.
“It’s an exciting space to be in,” said the director. “We have to be ready for that wave.”
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