Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that hydrogen-powered buses will be launched in India soon. Speaking at the News18 Rising India Summit, Gadkari also said that the country will also be soon using hydrogen to fuel aeroplanes.

"We aspire to be an energy exporter and not an importer. Keeping this in mind, India is looking at the future of transport," the minister added.

India will soon roll out a green port policy to encourage local ports to adopt emerging global standards on carbon neutrality, in order to attain the broader national goal of net zero emissions, reports say. The policy would include parameters for green port categorisation besides incentives for transitioning towards less polluting fuels and improving efficiency to lower overall emissions. It will also provide integration of Green Hydrogen mission with a focus on guidelines to use clean fuel in the port and shipping industry.

The Panchamrit (five nectar elements), defined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), will be the guiding principles of this policy. The PM has set a national target of raising the non fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030. India, as a part of the plan, will also reduce the total projected CO2 emissions by 1 billion tonnes from 2021 to 2030 and become Net zero carbon emitter by 2070. Indian ports are already proposing to reduce carbon emissions per tonne of cargo by 30% by 2030.

The Indian energy transition landscape is expected to undergo a sea change over this decade with the sector providing a USD 25 billion annual investment opportunity for investors, a study by Avendus Capital - an Indian investment banking franchise - and Green Energy Pipeline (GEP) - an independent research firm based in the UK - has stated.

"Despite the global economic slowdown, investment interest in the Indian energy transition sector swelled in 2022 and India will continue to be at the forefront of global carbonisation efforts,” said Prateek Jhawar, MD and Head, Infrastructure & Real Assets Investment Banking, Avendus Capital.

Akhil Dokania from the same department, stated “We believe green hydrogen, energy storage, EV charging, carbon capture, utilisation and energy efficiency are the segments that will create a mark over this decade. Existing companies will expand their offerings and multiple new players or business models will contribute towards energy transition.”

Air Liquide, a French gas giant, has announced plans to construct an industrial-scale ammonia cracking pilot plant in Port of Antwerp, Belgium, to support hydrogen imports.

The plant will facilitate the conversion of ammonia to hydrogen. The plant is expected to be operational in 2024, and the Flemish Government-the government for the Flemish region of Belgium-has confirmed its financial support to the project. Last month (Feb 2023), Air Liquide and TotalEnergies announced they had partnered to develop a network of 100 hydrogen refuelling stations across Europe.

Ammonia can be used as an energy carrier that can be produced using renewable energy. With properties making it easier to store and transport compared to pure H2, there is already infrastructure in place for ammonia’s production and transport, which will allow regions with abundant renewable energy to export ammonia to end users across the globe, where it can be converted back to hydrogen to contribute to the decarbonisation of industry and mobility.

Current opportunities and challenges in rolling out and scaling up Hydrogen Valleys in Europe were discussed in a workshop held in Brussels for two days from Feb 28. Organised by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, the European Hydrogen Valleys Partnership and the Northern Netherlands, the workshop was titled "Towards an EU Roadmap for Hydrogen Valleys”.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) in partnership with the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) will be conducting an event, ‘Green Hydrogen – Accelerating Net-Zero Pathways’ in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, on April 2, on the sides of the Energy Transition Working Group G20 meeting. Some of the plenary speakers at the event include Abhay Thakur – G20 Sous Sherpa, and Bhupinder Singh Bhalla – Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy.

 Metastable Materials that specialises in recycling of lithium-ion batteries is scaling up its battery recycling capabilities with the opening of an urban mining facility having yearly material processing capacity of 1500 tonnes located on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

The facility will be the first to deploy a chemical-free integrated carbothermal reduction (ICR) process for battery recycling that extracts valuable materials out of lithium-ion batteries. This process significantly reduces capital and operational expenditure in contrast to conventional practices, along with recovery rate of over 90% for the constituent materials.

With the extraction of rare metals such as cobalt, nickel from dead Li-ion batteries, Metastable is aiming to provide a green alternative to freshly mined metals and integrate them with the existing industrial supply chains. 

The Uttar Pradesh government has given the go-ahead for a green energy corridor project to evacuate power from the 4,000 MW power to be generated from various solar energy projects in the Bundelkhand region of the state. The project would involve setting up 2,172-km-long transmission lines at a cost of INR 4,786 Crore to evacuate power from these solar energy projects.

State Energy minister, AK Sharma said that the state government would contribute 20% of the project cost. The union government would bear 33%, while a German company would provide the remaining 47% of the funds. Power evacuation would be needed from the solar parks coming up in Jhansi, Lalitpur and Jalaun in the Bundelkhand region.

Tata Power Solar Systems Limited (TPSSL), one of India’s largest integrated solar companies has received the Letter of Award (LoA) of Rs 1,755 crore for setting up a 300 MW Domestic Content Requirement (DCR) based EPC project for NLC India Limited (NLCIL), formerly called Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited, as part of the CPSU scheme. The project, located at Barsingar in Bikaner District, Rajasthan, is expected to generate more than 750 Mn. units and reduce 6 lakh tonnes of CO2 annually.