A draft National Hydrogen Energy Mission document, drawn out by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) is currently under inter-ministerial consultation.
The draft mission, among other things, would aim to scale up green hydrogen production and utilisation across multiple sectors, including transportation. RK Singh, Union Minister for Power and New and Renewable Energy informed the Lok Sabha yesterday.
It must be noted that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech in February this year had announced the launch of a Hydrogen Energy Mission in 2021-22 for generating hydrogen from green power sources.
Hydrogen was also notified as a fuel for automotive application for BS-VI vehicles by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) in September 2016. In September last year, MoRTH specified the safety and type approval requirements for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Automotive Industry Standard (AIS) 157.
In the same month, an 18% blend of hydrogen with CNG (HCNG) was also notified by the ministry as an automotive fuel.
In another important development to support hydrogen and fuel cell research, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has launched a ‘Hydrogen and Fuel Cell programme’ and ‘Advanced Hydrogen and Fuel Cell programme’. For this purpose, DST released an amount of INR 83 lakh in 2020-21, against INR 20.38 crore in 2019-20.
Meanwhile, the MNRE has sanctioned an R&D project titled “Design and Development of 20 kW Low Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell with high indigenous content” to the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials, Chennai at a total project cost of INR 21.42 crore, with MNRE contributing INR 17.74 crore.
Vehicle-related development
Under projects supported by the Government of India, various private and public sector organisations have developed and demonstrated various hydrogen powered vehicles.
Tata Motors have developed six fuel cell buses, while 50 hydrogen enriched CNG (H-CNG) buses in Delhi have been developed and demonstrated by Indian Oil in collaboration with the Delhi Government.
In addition, IIT Delhi in collaboration with Mahindra & Mahindra has done two hydrogen fuelled internal combustion engine buses and 15 hydrogen fuelled three-wheelers. M&M has also developed two hydrogen-diesel dual fuel cars, while one fuel cell car has been developed by CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, CSIR-Central Electrochemical Laboratory and CSIR-National Physical Laboratory.