India to call for renewable H2 production bids in months: minister

India is to seek bids for renewable hydrogen production in the coming months and plans to introduce a compulsory purchase obligation for renewable hydrogen on fertilizer and petroleum companies, the country's New and Renewable Energy Minister RK Singh said at a summit June 17.

"In another three to four months we plan to come out with bids for green hydrogen," Singh said at the Energy Leadership Summit 2021 hosted by ETEnergyWorld.

He did not elaborate on the bidding process of define capacities to be offered. Under the ministry's general auction guidelines, bids (for solar projects, for instance) are invited for either fixed or escalating offtake tariffs payable over a 25 year period.

A first electrolysis plant being developed by a company called ACME would be inaugurated in July in Rajasthan state, the minister said, without adding detail.

"Apart from that, we will be coming out with bids for large scale green hydrogen production for use in fertilizer and petroleum [sectors]," the minister said.

Singh said there would also be a renewable hydrogen purchase obligation on these sectors, "like we have a renewable purchase obligation because people use gray [conventional] hydrogen for different purposes."

India's conventional hydrogen production was based on reforming of imported natural gas, the minister noted.

"We propose to replace that with made-in-India green hydrogen," he said.

India published a National Hydrogen Energy Mission statement earlier this year, but is yet to define production or capacity targets. it has an ambitious target of 450 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, up from 92.54 GW as of end-January 2020.