Shoots of growth for Indian green hydrogen

India’s 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 big population could all benefit India’s green hydrogen plans.

“The government of India has done a phenomenal job in terms of rolling out these incentive schemes,” said Bikesh Ogra, managing director and CEO of the Jakson Green subsidiary of diesel genset and solar panel maker Jakson Group, referring to the two Strategic Interventions for Green Hydrogen Transition (SIGHT) incentives, for electrolyzer manufacturing and hydrogen production, respectively.

Jakson Group is attempting to move away from its diesel genset origins and entered the solar industry in 2014. The company now develops third-party solar projects including in the international market, with projects in Africa and the Middle East. Half of Jakson Green’s revenues in 2024 have come from international operations, Ogra said.

Hard-to-abate

Jakson Green is now entering the green hydrogen industry tasked with decarbonizing sectors where emissions are “hard-to-abate,” such as shipping, aviation, long-haul heavy-goods vehicles, steel manufacturing, and ammonia production for fertilizer.

The company is already producing electrolyzers at pilot-scale and aims to reach gigawatt scale in 2026.

The SIGHT scheme aims to establish 15 GW of green-hydrogen electrolyzer manufacturing capacity and state governments are offering incentives to attract prospective electrolyzer factories.

“Today, cumulatively around half a million tons of demand aggregation has been done by some very credible nodal agencies,” Ogra said, but warned the necessary infrastructure will take longer and be more cumbersome than developing the nation’s solar and wind power industries.

“Solar in India started in 2010 and by 2014 we were already at grid parity,” said the Jakson Green CEO, referring to solar electricity costing the same as grid power. Ogra expects the infrastructure buildout will take “another five to seven years,” to bridge the gap toward replacing the conventional way of producing gray, fossil-fuel powered hydrogen. This would also apply to hydrogen fuel stock for things like sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which experts in the aviation industry acknowledge cannot be fulfilled by biofuels alone.

Trial and error

The same will be true for the hydrogen stock needed for green methanol, to power shipping. “So there’s work to do but governments have been encouraging to really migrate [off fossil fuels], giving incentives all across the globe,” said Ogra.

Hydrogen regulatory frameworks have to be developed, and while the technology is maturing rapidly, trial and error doesn’t always bring the expected results, meaning development plans must be changed and adjusted. Hurdles include international disparities because of a lack of uniform global standards, such as with “the European way of looking at green hydrogen versus the Indian way,” said Ogra, referring to code standards and safety compliances, adding that everyone is still learning.

Despite the rocky road ahead, The Jakson Green boss is palpably positive about the prospects for electrolyzer markets.

“We see a real uptick in the demand, maybe around the latter half of 2025,” he said, with demand set to increase continuously after that point. “Right now, we are burning cash but we are burning cash for a reason,” he said.

The reason is that India has embarked on a trial-and-error mission to collectively bring its hydrogen economy forward, with the government eager to achieve energy security and be rid of its dependence on fossil fuel imports.

National goal

The Indian government’s National Green Hydrogen Mission strategy aims to establish pilot projects in sectors such as steel, shipping, aviation, and ammonia production for fertilizer. There are also plans to support research and development, and the buildout of electrolyzer manufacturing capacity is a key element of that approach.

Thus far, progress has been hampered by what Ogra refers to as a “timing mismatch” between demand and the policy that can drive it. For example, aviation and shipping are only partly beginning to look down the barrel of decarbonization targets. Ogra reports said potential electrolyzer demand is “not something that is getting translated on the ground.”

India also has its fair share of international energy giants with enough financial clout to build out vertically integrated green hydrogen supply chains all on their own.

The biggest of those, Adani Group, has joined forces with French energy and petroleum multinational TotalEnergies to commit to investing more than $50 billion through to 2034 in green hydrogen and its associated ecosystems. An initial aim is to develop 1 million metric tons of hydrogen production capacity by 2030.

Manufacturing plans

Another big Indian player, Reliance Industries Limited, in 2021 pledged around $8.5 billion to establish a vertically integrated industrial cluster with gigafactories for solar, energy storage, electrolyzer, and fuel cell production. The initial phases of that ambitious site are entering operation. Reliance is investing in production of alkaline water, proton-exchange membrane (PEM), and even more early-stage anion-exchange membrane electrolyzer production. Danish firm Stiesdal has been brought into the fold to speed up cost reduction and commercialization of the PEM technology.

Jakson Green’s electrolyzer manufacturing effort initially involves producing five models of grid-scale alkaline electrolyzers but Ogra insisted the company is technology agnostic when it comes to electrolyzer technology.

On PEM electrolysis, he said, “I personally feel, along with my technical team, that it may be too premature to get into partnerships since the technology is evolving for the moment.” The CEO pointed out that alkaline electrolyzers have been around for a while and are suitable for grid-scale production, when fed green electricity from the grid close to where the hydrogen will be used. Jakson is taking that approach for its pilot projects for green ammonia to decarbonize fertilizer, green ethanol and methanol for aviation and shipping, and the production of green steel. Ogra said there is a lot of traction in those sectors.

The current emphasis on alkaline electrolysis at Jakson has meant 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 application for the energy carrier fell down because the capital- and operating-expenditure needed for hydrogen storage and compression were very high.

Energy storage

PEM electrolyzers, while still at a nascent stage of development, appear to offer more promise for storing solar energy as they are lighter and able to more quickly respond to energy fluctuations. Numerous studies have backed the idea of using PEM electrolysis to store renewable energy, for example in off-grid situations, and even on a small scale.

One such example, a paper “Standalone electricity supply system with solar hydrogen and fuel cell: Possible to get rid of storage batteries?” published in The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, showed 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 the use of PEM electrolysis for clean energy storage, adding that Jakson will take a “wait-and-see” approach and study the results of pilot projects as well as academic studies.

Alkaline electrolysis is the most mature approach for green hydrogen production, but Ogra acknowledged 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 be even 10% of the overall revenue stream.”

“Going forward, two years, three years down the line, I’m assuming that it will jump up to maybe around 25% to 30%. By 2030, we should have an equal mix of hydrogen and other renewable energy projects that we are doing,” he said.

Some hydrogen industry commentators have likened the situation to the early days of the battery sector, which faced similar investment hurdles at first and required decisive industrial policies such as those rolled out by China, initially for the electrification of its transport sector.

Jakson Green’s long-term vision is to manufacture electrolyzers on a gigawatt-plus scale 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 the global needs, including Europe, the US, and the Middle East,” said Ogra, adding that this is just a matter of time.

“It’s an exciting space to be in,” said the executive. “We need to be ready for that wave.”

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