Kerala to build a green hydrogen hub in Kochi

The India Hydrogen Alliance (IH2A), a business organisation with headquarters in Delhi, and the Keralan government announced that they are jointly assessing a proposal for the construction of the Kochi green hydrogen (KGH2) hub with a potential capital expenditure of $575 million.

The plant will have a 150 MW electrolyser, storage facility, and infrastructure hub, a capacity of 60 tonne per day (TPD), with the potential to reach gigawatt-scale capacity.

Following a meeting for consultation between the government, business, and funding organizations, the plan was shared by IH2A and the Kerala government. “We are actively collaborating with industry and investors to replicate the hydrogen valleys in Europe, in Kerala. The proposed hydrogen hub is significant for its scale and its focus on building hydrogen infrastructure,” said KA Abraham, chief principal secretary to the Chief Minister, Government of Kerala. As per the press release, the project, which aims to develop green hydrogen production, storage, transmission, and end-use infrastructure within a 50-km cluster in Kochi, is based on the Hydrogen Valley projects in the EU.

The plan will concentrate on the transportation use-case in the first phase in order to power fleets of 60 buses with retrofitted hydrogen internal combustion engines and to construct the necessary infrastructure.

The hub's capacity is anticipated to be expanded in the second phase in response to industrial demand for green hydrogen from refineries, fertilizer, and chemical plants.