Roadmap for hydrogen economy development in India - Marking key indices

The full benefits of hydrogen & fuel cell technologies play out when deployed at scale and across multiple applications

Hydrogen is at a turning point and will benefit from economies of scale as it ramps up across states and sectors in what is known as sector coupling. Sector coupling refers to “the idea of interconnecting (integrating) the energy-consuming sectors – buildings (heating and cooling), transport, and industry -with the power-producing sector in order to provide grid-balancing services to the power sector, including supply-side integration focused on the integration of the power and gas sectors for reliability and resiliency. When deployed across multiple applications, systemic benefits start to kick in: infrastructure costs are shared across applications, technological developments in one application can be applied to others, and sector coupling benefits play a meaningful role.

In this section, we describe a road map for transitioning to a hydrogen economy in which hydrogen becomes a mainstream fuel option. 

The road map was developed to put forward a concrete proposal for various sectors and applications that may be developed and deployed in the coming years. It provides milestones for deployment and leverages domestic strengths to deliver on the vision set out to develop hydrogen industry in the country.

The road map is organized into four key phases: 2020 to 2022, 2023 to 2025, 2026 to 2030, and post-2030. Each phase has specific milestones for the deployment of hydrogen across applications. Each phase also describes the key enablers required, categorized as:

(i) policy enablers and 

(ii) hydrogen supply and end-use equipment enablers. Policy enablers are needed initially to create the right incentives to enable the private sector to invest in and develop the hydrogen market.

Roadmap to a hydrogen economy

The supply of hydrogen scales up and shifts to low-carbon technologies. Hydrogen is currently produced mainly from natural gas without CCS globally, which could deliver 40 to 50 percent lower GHG emissions than gasoline ICEs and zero tailpipe emissions for light-duty FCEVs. New low carbon hydrogen production pathways using natural-gas reforming techniques exist, such as steam methane reforming (SMR) and autothermal reforming (ATR) with CCS or with renewable natural gas (RNG). Likewise, players can scale up existing water electrolysis with low-carbon electricity, including renewables. As these production pathways grow, costs will decline significantly.

2020 to 2022: Immediate Next Step

In the first two to three years, the aim is to establish dependable and technology-neutral decarbonization goals in more states and at the central level, which will serve as a guide to specific policy and regulatory actions, including updates to codes and standards. Public incentives and standards can bridge barriers to initial market launch, bring a wider range of mature hydrogen solutions to market, increase public awareness and acceptance, and continue to pilot hydrogen use in other applications. Progress focuses on early commercially viable applications in early adopter markets, like the expansion of FCEV nationwide and further deployment of both light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles. These early applications require a combination of incentives to reduce barriers to entry and market-facing mechanisms to enable scale.

In this phase, mature applications, and applications close to breaking even, such as back up power solutions, scale up. In transport, early adopter states focus on developing fueling infrastructure to support FCEV adoption and begin to see second-generation products in passenger vehicles and fueling stations. Fleets relying on depot fueling, such as buses and light commercial vehicles, and first-generation medium- and heavy-duty trucks, do not require a nationwide network of fueling stations. Demand growth is sufficient for the first dedicated hydrogen production facilities for transport, along with for the development of gaseous and liquid distribution.

Pilots in other applications, such as blending in the gas grid, are pursued to prepare for broader hydrogen adoption.