Draft roadmap released for R&D for green hydrogen

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) released a draft R&D roadmap for the green hydrogen ecosystem in India, which stresses developing fuel cells for long-range travel, particularly in the road transport sector.The draft report emphasises combination of hydrogen fuel cells, advanced batteries, and supercapacitors that will be key technologies in the automobile sector in the coming years.“Hydrogen technologies across the value chain are currently under development. Mature technologies such as fuel cells are not yet cost-competitive with alternatives, and other upcoming technologies promising lower costs are yet to prove long-term performance,” it pointed out.The aim is to design affordable, efficient, safe, and reliable pathways. At the current levels of technology development, significant scope exists for improvement in each of these aspects. Accordingly, major economies and corporations are heavily invested in R&D.Currently, India imports around 85 per cent of its crude oil requirements. The transport sector contributes almost one-third of this, and road transportation accounts for around 80 per cent of the energy consumption.