‘Gradual mandates on green hydrogen may not be enough’
NEW DELHI : India’s ambition to accelerate its green hydrogen mission faces challenges as the targets have not translated into actual demand, and the adoption of a gradual mandate for the use of green hydrogen may not help the country achieve the goal of 5 million tonnes (mt) capacity by 2030, said Sumant Sinha, the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of ReNew. “The size of the opportunity in green hydrogen is almost limitless in a way based on just what governments have stated as being their plans. But a lot of that has to translate from government targets to actual demand, and that has not happened so far," Sinha said in an interview at the Energy Transition Working Group Meeting and the Clean Energy Ministerial under India’s G20 presidency in Goa.
ReNew is one of India’s largest renewable energy companies, with an operational capacity of 8 gigawatts (GW) and commissioned capacity of 6GW in wind and solar energy. “It will happen slowly. For demand to manifest, we’ll need to have mandates by governments on the use of green hydrogen because, without that, it’s always going to be more expensive.
No one will voluntarily shift. So, either there’ll have to be subsidies or mandates, or both. In the European Union (EU), it is partly subsidies and partly mandates; in the US, it is subsidies.
In India, we still don’t know what it’s going to be," he added. However, the Indian government is likely to take the route of gradual mandates to drive the shift from fossil fuels to green hydrogen, he said. “The government doesn’t have the money to subsidize, certainly not in India.
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