The draft proposal, which recommends green hydrogen exports to Japan, South Korea, and Europe, also suggests setting up four integrated hydrogen hubs and running long-range public transport buses fuelled by hydrogen cells on heritage routes, remote locations, and ecologically sensitive zones.
The playbook involves leveraging the country’s landmass and low solar and wind tariffs to produce low-cost green hydrogen and ammonia for exports, thus bolstering the country’s geopolitical heft.
Open access allows large users of power, typically those who consume more than 1 MW, to buy power from the open market instead of depending on an expensive grid.
Green hydrogen gas is produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolyzer that may be powered by electricity generated from renewable energy sources.
The draft has been circulated to the NITI Aayog, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the department of atomic energy, and relevant ministries such as power, petroleum and natural gas, steel, science and technology, road transport and highways, as well as the department for promotion of industry and internal trade,” said an MNRE official, one of two the people mentioned above, on condition of anonymity.
This comes at a time when India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, is recalibrating its energy sourcing policy, keeping strategic and economic interests in mind.
“The plan may also involve running public transport and commercial fuel cell buses having a 60,000 km annual range on a pilot basis on heritage routes, remote locations, and ecologically sensitive zones, wherein half of the demand is to be met from green hydrogen,” the person said.