Friday, October 22, 2021

GAIL to build India's largest green hydrogen plant

State-owned GAIL (India) Ltd will build India's largest green hydrogen plant in the next 12-14 months, as it looks to supplement its natural gas business with carbon-free fuel, according to media reports



The company, which owns pipelines and provides bulk and retail supplies of natural gas, has floated a tender for a 10 MW electrolyser that can produce 4 - 5 tons of green hydrogen daily. 

It is learnt that the project, which could take a year to complete, could come up at Vijaipur, Madhya Pradesh, where GAIL has a unit.

If it fructifies, GAIL's could be the biggest green hydrogen plant in India. 

"We have on a pilot basis started mixing hydrogen in natural gas in one of the cities," the report quotes GAIL's Chairman, Manoj Jain as saying.

GAIL will sell the hydrogen to its customers, who shall be soon mandated by the government to make a certain prescribed percentage of their energy consumption green hydrogen. 

GAIL is then the latet public sector undertaking to announce its plans to get into hydrogen. Earlier, Indian Oil Corporation and NTPC had announced that they would get into the manufacture of green hydrogen. Thermal power major, NTPC, has awarded the contract for electrolyser supply to Technip.

Viewpoint:

State-owned companies are working in individual silos, which is rather silly. Presumably, other PSUs too would want to get into green hydrogen and would therefore need electrolysers. It would be cheaper and easier to aggregate all their demand and go in for a joint purchase of electrolysers, preferably standardized. This only calls for co-ordinated action. Why such a simple task could not be achieved begs an answer.

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