Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), will soon launch a mega tender for aggregation of demand for Green Hydrogen in the country, as part of the implementation of the National Green Hydrogen Mission. Sharma also informed that SECI will soon announce a large tender for setting up of 4 GW Hour battery storage capacity.
Sinopec, China’s state-owned oil and chemical giant, has embarked on the world's largest project to use green hydrogen for making chemicals from coal. To be built in Ordos in Inner Mongolia at a cost of about $830 million, the complex will produce 30,000 metric tons (t) of green hydrogen and 240,000 t of green oxygen annually. Sinopec unveiled an ambitious hydrogen development plan in 2021, vowing to become a national leader in green hydrogen. In 2021, the company produced 3.5 million t of hydrogen, primarily from natural gas and coal, accounting for 14% of China’s total output.
An Israeli company has signed a strategic agreement with a major Japanese conglomerate to supply its technology for producing hydrogen, a gas widely seen as a source of green power for the future. The Caesarea-based H2Pro company will work with Tokyo-headquartered Sumitomo Corporation in a deal valued at $250 million by 2030. H2Pro is currently building a 0.4-kilogram megawatt pilot project capable of producing 200 kilograms of hydrogen per day.
The Maharashtra government presented its first budget, a massive ₹5,47,450 crore for the next financial year 2023-24, based on the principle of ‘Panchamrut’, with a focus on farmers, women, tribals, development of the infrastructure with substantial capital investment, employment, and eco-friendly development. An investment of ₹ 75,000 crore is expected in the field of green hydrogen, green ammonia, solar and wind energy. Solar power projects will be set up in 20,000 Gram Panchayats.
Scientists in Australia have discovered an enzyme in bacteria that converts air into energy, an advance that opens the way for a new clean source of power. The finding, published in the journal Nature, shows that this enzyme uses the low amounts of the hydrogen in the atmosphere to create an electrical current. The researchers extracted the enzyme responsible for using atmospheric hydrogen from a bacterium called Mycobacterium smegmatis. They showed that this enzyme, called Huc, turns hydrogen gas into an electrical current.
In an "urgently needed" discovery that could revolutionise direct air capture, researchers from Lehigh University have found a way to potentially make the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere cheaper and more efficient. The researchers introduced a new type of hybrid sorbent that contains copper and discovered that it has a carbon capture capacity "nearly two to three times greater" than any other sorbent used to date.
The White House passed a historic piece of legislation with $369 billion in spending to address climate change. One of the most significant tax credits in that historic law was a tax credit to make hydrogen in climate-conscious ways.The impact of the tax credit on emissions reductions depends on how federal agencies implement it. And, as with most things in accounting, the devil lies in the details.
Rich nations have an obligation to fund South Africa’s development of green hydrogen as part of a global effort to decarbonise, according to the presidency’s infrastructure chief.
The most industrialised nation on the continent that depends on coal to generate 80% of its electricity has plans to attract as much as $250 billion into green hydrogen, an emerging technology used to split water using renewable energy.
A small plane retrofitted by a U.S. environmental company to run on something other than jet fuel aced its test flight in Washington state. The plane was retrofitted with the capability to run solely on hydrogen – which went "beautifully," according to the test pilot.
The hydrogen-powered plane was produced by Los Angeles-based Universal Hydrogen with the hopes of leading the "race" in the United States to reduce carbon emissions from airlines. Universal Hydrogen says its conversion kits for small planes can help bring its passenger service into zero emissions by 2025.
Olectra's technical partnership with Reliance Industries is expected to accelerate the development of hydrogen-powered buses and offer the next-generation transport system to the Indian market. The fact that the hydrogen bus will be launched commercially within a year is also promising, as it suggests that the technology is ready for deployment and could potentially become a viable solution for public transport in the near future. Olectra Greentech's stock price surged more than 17 percent 24 after the company announced its partnership with Reliance Industries to develop hydrogen buses.
Vertex Hydrogen, a joint venture of Essar group and UK's Progressive Energy, has signed agreements to supply over 1,000 MW of low carbon hydrogen to leading industrial names in the UK. Vertex is building a hydrogen manufacturing unit at Essar's Stanlow refinery complex in the UK. The joint venture, in which Essar Oil UK holds 90 per cent, will produce 1 gigawatt (GW) of hydrogen per year from two units from 2026.
H2 Green Steel has started production at Europe’s first green steel plant in Boden, northern Sweden. Using hydrogen to replace coal, the company hopes to roll out the first batches of steel by 2025. The green steel will be created by using hydrogen to react with iron ore, producing only water vapour. H2 Green Steel will produce its own green hydrogen using water from a nearby river. H2 Green Steel hopes the factory will produce five million tonnes of steel by 2030. The electricity required for electrolysis and the running of the plant will be provided by nearby renewable resources including hydropower from the Lule river and wind parks in the region. The process promises to cut emissions by 95% when compared with traditional steelmaking. Steel production currently accounts for 7% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.
Belgium and Germany have signed an agreement to work together on hydrogen, carbon capture, electrification and LNG projects.
An Energy Contact Group between the two countries will be set up to facilitate the interaction between industrial and political stakeholders on all aspects of the energy transition that has become an pressing priority for the European Union.
The port of Antwerp-Bruges hosted the Belgian-German energy summit on 14 February. Attended by both countries’ prime ministers. The port already handles 15% of European LNG and natural gas arrives there. Together the port and companies have set a target of capturing 50% of the port’s emissions by 2030.
Indian Railways is set to roll out the country’s first hydrogen-powered train by December 2023, in a major boost towards greening the national transporter’s network.
Addressing a press conference on February 1 after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the highest-ever capital outlay of Rs 2.40 lakh crore for the railways in the 2023 Budget, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the hydrogen train will be indigenously manufactured and will initially run on heritage circuits like Kalka-Shimla.Indian Railways will run 35 hydrogen trains on various heritage and hill routes at an estimated cost of Rs 80 crore a train and ground infrastructure cost of Rs 70 crore per route.
Constellation Energy Corp. plans to build a $900 million hydrogen production facility in the Midwest that would combine new nuclear and green hydrogen generation tax credits to create material long-term cash flow. Constellation's first commercial-scale facility will use 250 MW of nuclear power to produce about 33,450 tonnes of hydrogen annually, with the option to expand to 400 MW, according to CFO Daniel Eggers. The company aims to sell 90% of production to on-site customers through off-take agreements.
The world's largest project producing green hydrogen broke ground in Ordos, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec.
Ordos is a place rich in solar and wind resources. The project marks Sinopec's second green hydrogen project, following the one in Kuqa City, the construction of which began in 2021. Eighty percent of that project has been completed. Once operational, the new project is expected to produce 30,000 tonnes of green hydrogen and 240,000 tonnes of green oxygen annually, Sinopec said.
The Kurnool plant is expected to be commissioned by December this year. A third of the power will be supplied to Greenko’s green hydrogen and green ammonia facility coming up at the port city of Kakinada, from where the green ammonia will be exported. In all, Greenko will invest $6 billion into this business, the Chief Operating Officer of Greenko ZeroC Pvt Ltd, Gautam Reddy, told businessline.
Airbus and Air New Zealand’s hydrogen partnership is entering the next stage with the inclusion of New Zealand's key hydrogen ecosystem players. The 'Hydrogen Consortium' will seek to advance hydrogen-powered commercial flight and develop hubs at airports across the country, starting with Christchurch International Airport.
The next six months will see consortium partners develop a 'hydrogen ecosystem' for aviation in New Zealand - including proposed policies, regulations and incentives - and focus on research until the end of 2023. Following this, the second phase will explore whether hydrogen aircraft test flights can be held in New Zealand - the country's flag carrier, Air New Zealand, is eager to replace its Bombardier Q300 fleet with low-emission planes and also plans to fly its first commercial demonstrator flight from 2026
The Indian public sector oil refineries have together planned to set up 137 kilo tonnes per annum (ktpa) of green hydrogen facilities by 2030. This was revealed by Dr S S V Ramakumar, Director – R&D, Indian Oil Corporation, at the India Energy Week.
He pointed out that IOC had entered into an agreement with the renewable energy company, ReNew Power and the engineering major, L&T, for putting up green hydrogen plants, not only for IOC but for other refiners also.
By 2030, India aims to be the World’s 3rd largest economy. By ramping up its manufacturing capacity to 300 million tons per annum, India’s steel sector will assume the role of a growth multiplier. However, steel is a highly carbon-intensive sector & contributes ~8% of global CO2 emissions. For India, the sector is responsible for 11% of total emissions or about 250 MtCO2e in absolute terms.
To achieve a substantial reduction in the carbon footprint of the steel manufacturing process, development of breakthrough technologies is crucial. To achieve this, there are fundamentally two pathways: one is to introduce carbon capture technologies in tandem with existing processes to lock-in the carbon; the other is to replace carbon with ‘green-reductants’ such as hydrogen.
"My impression is that India will achieve targets such net zero emissions by 2070 and 500 gigawatts of clean energy capacity by 2030 well in advance," International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) director general La Camera Said
Indian authorities have maintained that goals have been set with a clear eye on what was feasible. The technological and regulatory developments as well as the policy signals for directing investment in green and clean energy indicate that India does have room to improve on the timeline for its targets.
Lorem Pink hydrogen already has some potentially significant backers. These include EDF Energy, which has floated the idea of producing hydrogen at Sizewell C, a 3.2-gigawatt nuclear power station planned for the U.K.
Alongside blue and green, another color attracting attention is pink. Like green hydrogen, its process incorporates electrolysis, but there’s a key difference: pink uses nuclear.
If you split … water, you get hydrogen and oxygen. But splitting water takes energy, so what pink hydrogen is about is splitting water using energy that has come from nuclear.
This means that “the whole system is low carbon, because … there’s no carbon in water … but also the energy source is also very low carbon because it’s nuclear.
Hyderabad-based Greenko Group has signed an agreement with John Cockerill, a Belgium-based manufacturer of alkaline electrolysers, to supply 28 units of 5 MW alkaline electrolysers for the green ammonia plant in Una, Himachal Pradesh. The electrolyzers are due to be delivered in March 2024 and the plant is set to be commissioned by June 2024.