India to invest $200 million in next 5-7 years to promote hydrogen use in transportation

New Delhi, India (Urban Transport News): As India is on the quest to promote Hydrogen as a clean fuel for the mobility sector, Hydrogen-blended CNG is emerging as an excellent interim technology for achieving emissions reduction and import substitution. The Government of India is planning to invest about US$200 million to promote the use of hydrogen use in the transportation sectors.

"India will spend $200 million over the next five to seven years to promote the use of hydrogen," said Indu Shekhar Chaturvedi, Secretary, Ministry of Renewal New & Renewable Energy at a virtual industry event on Thursday.

The Ministry has asked oil and gas companies to set up seven hydrogen pilot plants by the end of this financial year," said Tarun Kapoor, Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas at the Hydrogen Economy - New Delhi Dialogue event.

Governments and energy companies around the world are now betting on clean hydrogen playing a leading role in efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions, though its future uses and costs remain uncertain.

Union Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan said that the government planned to scale up the use of hydrogen blended with compressed natural gas (H-CNG) as a transportation fuel.

"We are looking forward to introducing H-CNG as an intermittent technology in a big way for both automotive and domestic cooking applications," he said.

Last year in October, Pradhan had launched Indian Oil's compact reformer plant along with the trial run of 50 Hydrogen-blended CNG buses at Rajghat in Delhi.

H-CNG is a blend of hydrogen and CNG, the ideal hydrogen concentration being 18%. Compared to conventional CNG, the use of H-CNG can reduce the emission of carbon monoxide up to 70%, besides enabling up to 5% savings in fuel, according to test reports by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL).