Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that India has the potential to be a Green Hydrogen exporter.

Addressing the International Conference of Green Hydrogen 2023, Dr Jitendra Singh said, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi approved the launch of the National Green Hydrogen Mission with a budgetary outlay of about 2.4 billion dollars and it reflects India’s firm resolve address the difficult challenges of de-carbonization on our pathways to Net Zero in 2070.

Dr Jitendra Singh pointed out the painstaking efforts undertaken over the last two years since the Prime Minister had announced India’s intention to create a dedicated mission for Green Hydrogen culminating in the announcement of the National Green Hydrogen Mission in January this Year.

The Minister said, India has been at the forefront of the global narrative for fighting climate change and has done far more than what would be a commensurate response that would be called for on account of our historical or even our current per capita carbon emissions.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, India is uniquely poised to emerge as a prominent global leader in production of Green Hydrogen not just on the basis of its abundant renewable energy resources and the benefits of one of the world’s lowest costs of regeneration, but also because of its R&D ecosystem and the framework designed for R&D in cross-cutting sectors of hydrogen production, transport, electrolyze manufacturing, support infrastructure, fuel cell EVs, storage and utilisation.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, as Minister for Science and Technology, it's wonderful to see the positive synergy between the private sector and academic institutions and he hoped that this translates into effective collaboration in every field of research required in the expansion of possibilities of Green Hydrogen.

Dr Jitendra Singh also pointed out that Hydrogen Mission has great potential for job generation through the Startup ecosystem as India has emerged number three in the world with about one lakh startups and 100 odd Unicorns in various sectors including in cutting edge science frontiers. He said, Indian Startup system proposed to create a mechanism for harnessing proactive support of Banking Finances.

Dr Jitendra Singh informed that a draft R&D Roadmap for Green Hydrogen Ecosystem in India has been released and thanked Professor Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor and his team and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy For this milestone. A public-private partnership framework for R&D called the Strategic Hydrogen Innovation Partnership or SHIP will be facilitated under the Mission. The Framework will entail creating a dedicated R&D fund, with contributions from Industry and Government institutions, the Minister added.

The R&D programme under the Mission will seek to develop globally competitive technologies in various segments. Consortium-based approach and leveraging the strengths of each institution/industry will be encouraged.

The Minister said India will also leverage the inherent strengths and technological experience of institutions such as BARC, ISRO, CSIR, IITs, IISc and many more and expressed confidence that this will see some path breaking research that will come out of the exercise and create huge multiplier effects on the domestic green hydrogen manufacturing sector in this decade and the next.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, it is encouraging to see that the Conference has provided a platform for all stakeholders to come together and deliberate on the great global challenges facing humanity in the form of climate change and to discuss one of the most promising pathways for decarbonizing hard to abate sectors through green hydrogen.

The variety of speakers was an excellent mix of technical experts, scientists and private sector practitioners, as well as public policy experts, internationally reputed innovators and offtake industries and it brought to fore the exemplary need to create such platforms for industry academia collaboration.

In his address, Professor Ajay Sood said, Green Hydrogen is here to stay and informed that so far 16 nations have announced Green Hydrogen Mission Plans. He said, an integrated approach is needed to minimise failure to this Mission and it should be looked at from five viewpoints-technical, commercial, regulatory, product integration and logistics.

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