India, Australia aims to lower hydrogen costs; India facilitates hydrogen industry

India and Australia signed a letter of intent on New and Renewable Energy Technology during the 4^th India – Australia Energy Dialogue on 15^th February 2022.

The LoI will pave the way for reducing the cost of new and renewable energy technologies and scaling up deployment to accelerate global emissions reduction. The focus of this LoI will be scaling up the manufacture and deployment of ultra-low-cost solar and clean hydrogen.

There is an urgent need to focus on advancing technology and clean energy transition. In this context, the agreed forward action plan includes areas like energy efficiency technologies; grid management; R&D collaboration on flue gas desulphurisation, biomass or hydrogen co-firing, water cycle optimisation, renewables integration, batteries and electric mobility.

Apart from the power sector, there are many desirable areas of cooperation agreed such as reducing costs of green hydrogen; cooperation in the sphere of coal-based energy security and resource deployment; investment opportunities in the minerals sector; exploring the potential for an LNG Partnership, among other areas.

India to provide free transmission for green hydrogen producers

Meanwhile, the Indian government plans to provide incentives for companies to set up green hydrogen plants. It will be issuing the first stage of the orders of the concessions to be given for green hydrogen like free transmission and banking very soon. This will indicate the facilities to be available for those who want to make green hydrogen.

R K Singh,  Power and Renewable Energy Minister, said, “Green hydrogen manufacturers can set up renewable energy capacity by themselves. We will give them free transmission until 2025 and banking for 30 days.”