India needs to form green hydrogen corridors, says NITI Aayog

 India needs to form Green Hydrogen Corridors, and governments can look at providing grants to startups and support entrepreneurs to promote green hydrogen, NITI Aayog said on Wednesday.

In a report titled 'Harnessing Green Hydrogen - Opportunities for Deep Decarbonisation in India', the NITI Aayog suggested that there is a need to facilitate investment through demand aggregation and dollar-based bidding for green hydrogen.

"Three hydrogen corridors should be developed across the country based on state grand challenges... The governments can provide grants and loans to startups and projects, support entrepreneurs through incubators and investor networks, and put in place regulations that manage first-mover risks," the report said.

The government can also use public procurement and purchase incentives (for green hydrogen) to create demand in niche markets and crowd in private investment, it added.

The report suggested the government should promote the export of green hydrogen and green hydrogen-embedded products through a global hydrogen alliance.

Green hydrogen or green ammonia is defined as hydrogen/ammonia produced by way of electrolysis of water using renewable energy.

Most large economies, including India, have committed to net-zero targets.

Transition to green hydrogen or green ammonia is one of the major requirements to reduce emissions, especially in the hard-to-abate sectors.

The report predicted that hydrogen demand in India could grow over 4X by 2050, representing almost 10 percent of global hydrogen demand.

In the long term, steel and heavy-duty trucking are likely to drive the majority of demand growth, accounting for almost 52 percent of total demand by 2050, it added.

Emphasising that the roadmap should also identify a timeline and scale of manufacturing support for electrolysers, the report said India may aim for 25 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 noted that radically improving the speed of regulatory clearances coupled with preferential treatment in public tenders will help catalyse local manufacturing.

The report suggested that grand challenges, public-private venture capital, and financing test bench infrastructure could be part of the R&D investments.

The report aims to serve as a key knowledge base for India's Green Hydrogen Policy discourse and private sector investment decisions.