Green Hydrogen

Green Hydrogen

Subject – Environment

Context – Construction major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and leading renewable energy company ReNew Power (ReNew) on Thursday signed an agreement to tap the $60 billion emerging green hydrogen market in India.

Concept –

• Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced by a process that does not emit any greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide or methane).
• The best example of green hydrogen is the hydrogen produced by splitting water using electricity from solar plants or wind turbines.

What is not green hydrogen?

• Hydrogen produced by a process that leaves some carbon footprint is not green hydrogen.
• Most of the hydrogen today is produced by steam reforming of methane, which produces some carbon dioxide.
• While there is no official definition of what the ‘colour’ of hydrogen means, it is generally accepted that when you say brown hydrogen, you are referring to hydrogen produced from coal.
• That produced from natural gas or petroleum is grey hydrogen.
• If you produce grey or brown hydrogen but you capture the carbon dioxide spewed and store it safely away, such hydrogen might be called blue hydrogen.

Green Purchase Obligation, or GPO

• The government wants to make it mandatory for industries (first fertilisers and oil refining) to use green hydrogen for a certain specified percentage of its overall energy requirements.
• Such a requirement is called green purchase obligation, or GPO – somewhat similar to the renewable purchase obligation (RPO).

Is water splitting using renewable electricity the only way to produce green hydrogen?

• It is the most promising technology, but not the only one available.
• A few other pathways exist and more are being discovered.
• For example, you can make hydrogen by feeding biomass to microbes such as bacteria, either directly or with the help of enzymes.
• With emerging technologies one could split water directly using sunshine, bypassing electricity.

Will it help India become net-zero nation? Of course, it will.

• Hydrogen is the cleanest fuel and it should play an important role in India’s net-zero ambitions.

To know more about Green Hydrogen, please refer September 2021 DPN.