IESA partners Norway’s Greenstat to support India’s hydrogen mission

India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) and Greenstat Hydrogen India will collaborate on establishing a Norwegian Centre of Excellence on Hydrogen in India and supporting the development of green hydrogen technologies.

February 19, 2021 Uma Gupta

Green hydrogen can be produced through electrolysis of water from any low-cost energy source.

Image: Siemens

India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) and Greenstat Hydrogen India, a Norwegian energy organization, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for two years to accelerate the hydrogen technology development in India. The two partners will collaborate on establishing a Norwegian Centre of Excellence on Hydrogen in India and the development of green hydrogen technologies in India.

In the Union Budget 2021, India’s government announced its plan to launch a National Hydrogen Mission. The draft mission is likely in the next two months.

For the financial year 2021-22, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has been allotted INR 25 crore for research and development (R&D) in hydrogen.

Once the draft of the mission is in place, it will be floated for public consultation. There will be five focus areas, including R&D, demand creation, industry application, eco-system creation (including policies) and bringing industry on board along with international partnerships.

In these five areas, demand creation will focus on the niche products that can be taken up and effective use of the fuel in trucks and buses. In the industrial sector, the government is looking at hydrogen as a replacement for coke in the steel industry and making use of the fuel in the fertilizer sector. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has indicated that by 2025-26, the industrial sector will be one of the major hydrogen recipients.

Debi Prasad Dash, Executive Director, India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) said hydrogen presents a potential opportunity for India to decrease reliance on oil imports and focus on alternate energy sources. In line with the industry needs, IESA launched the MIGHT (Mobility and Infrastructure with Green Hydrogen Technology) initiative in 2020 for supporting policies to enable use of green hydrogen in both stationery and mobility sector.

“We anticipate that advanced chemistry cell battery manufacturing mission and hydrogen mission together can enable India to fast-track decarbonization of grid, industrial sector, and transportation sector in the coming decade,” he added.

Sturle Pedersen, Chairman, Greenstat Hydrogen India, said, “Leading a broad representation of Norwegian cutting-edge expertise within the hydrogen sector, we are thrilled to be a part of this exciting journey together with IESA, the Indian industry, R&D institutes and the Indian government. Hydrogen is already a dominant part of the energy value chain world-wide. The challenge now is to revert the energy ecosystem back into its natural evolution. Renewable energy must replace fossil fuels, to preserve our habitat, and to preserve our mobility. Hydrogen is the natural energy carrier representing a vital part of the sustainable energy solution together with sustainable battery manufacturing.”

Since 2012, IESA has been working to help address enabling policy framework for all forms of energy storage technologies for both stationary and emobility applications. It worked to include hydrogen as part of the National Energy Storage Mission developed for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy in 2018.

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