The green hydrogen industry in Karnataka favours Mangalore due to its land, other infrastructure, and port. According to proposals submitted at investor meetings since 2012, energy has been one of the most important areas of interest for industrial investors in Karnataka for a decade.
Green hydrogen is emerging as the hottest new sector at the "Invest Karnataka 2022" meet in Bengaluru, where the manufacturing segments that attracted the most proposals were energy-related.
Green hydrogen attracted nearly a third of the event's total investment commitment of Rs 9.81 lakh crore. According to officials, Mangalore, a coastal region in Karnataka, is now in the running to become the nation's first green hydrogen cluster after receiving nine green hydrogen manufacturing proposals totalling Rs 2.86 lakh crore.
Hydrogen is mostly used in the oil, fertilizer, and automobile industries. The International Energy Agency (IEA) states that natural gas and coal are the primary sources of pure hydrogen, with a current annual demand of 70 million tonnes. The production of hydrogen results in annual CO2 emissions of 830 million tonnes. The global demand for hydrogen is equivalent to that of oil—330 million tonnes.
Blue hydrogen is currently being produced by 107 million tonnes of coal and 6% of the world's natural gas consumption. Electrolysis splits water into green hydrogen, which is carbon-free hydrogen and backs the IEA's NZE initiative. Due to the fact that it requires electricity and clean water, this method has a high price tag.
Even though green hydrogen is only produced at a rate of 2% at the moment, it has the potential to surpass blue and grey hydrogen in terms of both quantity and cost if and only if a carbon-free energy source, which appears to be geothermal, is utilized, whether it be hydrothermal, enhanced geothermal systems, or geothermal energy from repurposed oil and gas wells.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that 3,600 TWh of electricity is required to produce 70 million tonnes per year of hydrogen. This task can only be completed by geothermal energy that releases little carbon dioxide.
This expense can only be met by a low-carbon energy source like nuclear power or geothermal (hydrothermal, EGS, or geothermal energy from repurposed oil and gas wells). Both right now and in the future, this is the best choice. Similar to solar, banks won't give loans if the cost of production is too high. Financial backers will ease off, when they understand the ground truth.
What is so special about Mangalore?
Currently, fossil fuels produce the majority of the hydrogen used in industry. The term "green hydrogen" mostly refers to the process of producing the gas using renewable energy as the power source through electrolysis, which is the process of using electricity to separate water. The goal of the National Hydrogen Mission, which was announced last year, is to make India the largest hydrogen hub in the world.
Karnataka received a lot of proposals that involve building electrolyser plants in Mangalore and storing the hydrogen that is produced as ammonia. This is due to the need for extreme low temperatures and high pressure to store hydrogen, the lightest element, as a liquid or gas. At -33°C, liquid ammonia can be stored.
At a recent press conference, Karnataka's commissioner for industrial development, Gunjan Krishna, stated, that all these projects that have come are looking at exporting hydrogen. Doddabasavaraju, managing director of Karnataka Udyog Mitra, the single-window agency for industrial project approvals, explains that Mangalore's availability of water and the city's proximity to a port make it a preferred location for these plants.
In addition, the Mangalore Special Economic Zone (MSEZ) offers approximately 220 acres of land and infrastructure, which adds to its appeal. According to Doddabasavaraju, as a result, the new projects are currently considering a minimum requirement of 80 to 100 acres to establish a plant and begin operations.
The cost of hydrogen produced by electrolysis today ranges from $7 to $4.10 (Rs 570 to Rs 335) per kilogram, depending on the technology, according to the NITI Aayog report from June 2022. While this makes it hard to rival the ongoing expenses of dim or brown hydrogen, it seems a promising bet in the future as sustainable power and electrolysers become less expensive.
According to the NITI Aayog report, globally, demand for hydrogen has increased by 17 percent between 2010 and 2018 mostly for use in refineries and the production of ammonia. According to the report, the global push for decarbonization, current policy momentum, and factors such as cost and technology could potentially serve hydrogen for 7–18 percent of the global energy demand in 2050.
The conventional, high-carbon method of producing hydrogen from methane is seen as the alternative to the emerging R&D Green hydrogen produced through electrolysis. However, other approaches are also being investigated. For instance, a group from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is working on the production of green hydrogen by thermochemically converting biomass, a resource that is abundant in India, into hydrogen.
Today, steam-methane reforming accounts for 95% of the generation of hydrogen. A professor at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies at IISc, explains that you do the separation process to get pure hydrogen. You react methane, which is natural gas with steam to generate a mixture. They are trying to use biomass instead of that fossil fuel.
A technology for producing hydrogen from biomass is being demonstrated by Dasappa's lab in collaboration with the Indian Oil Corporation's Research & Development Centre in Faridabad. Hydrogen from this pilot plant, expected to be functional in a year's time, will be utilized to control energy unit transports.
According to Dasappa, his group is the only lab working on this strategy on this scale, and possibly one of a few around the world Dasappa says that while demand for green hydrogen is growing, it's also important to level the playing field for emerging technologies like hydrogen made from biomass.
