By Business India Editorial

India is looking for collaboration with France in the production of green hydrogen, a top ministerial official has said.

Vandana Kumar, additional secretary, ministry of new and renewable energy, said: “Our industry is very sanguine to take part in the green hydrogen movement by itself on generation of hydrogen, on production of various technologies and we are very much looking forward to our cooperation with France in this.”

She was speaking at a workshop on decarbonised hydrogen, organised by the of Embassy France in India and the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

Noting that a joint declaration of intent has already been agreed between the two countries, she said: “We are looking forward to a suitable opportunity, a suitable event that would be signed between India and France very soon.”

India now has 158 GW of installed capacity of renewable energy and another 87 GW is in the pipeline, she added.

Ambassador of France Emmanuel Lenain said that green hydrogen holds immense promise as a clean energy sector of the future. “It also represents an ambitious new chapter of cooperation between France and India, as agreed by President Macron and Prime Minister Modi in Paris on 4th May. By seizing the synergies between our two countries’ ambitious national hydrogen strategies, France and India can team up on green hydrogen to accelerate our clean energy transition, meet our carbon neutrality targets, and strengthen our energy independence.”

In the last decade, renewable energy has emerged as a pillar of Indo-French cooperation. At the government level, India and France co-founded the International Solar Alliance, work together in multilateral platforms to promote an ambitious international climate agenda, and have set up a cooperation roadmap between relevant ministries on renewable energy.

In the private sector, French companies have been investing massively in clean energy in India and have commissioned or are in the process of developing more than 24 GW of renewable energy projects in the country.

In this context, decarbonised hydrogen is a priority area of cooperation. Both countries see it as a promising technology to decarbonise several hard-to-abate sectors of our economies, such as refinery, fertilisers, petrochemicals, steel, heavy mobility, shipping, and aviation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the National Hydrogen Mission in August 2021, which sets a target of producing 5 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of green hydrogen by 2030. Similarly, in September 2020, France published its decarbonised hydrogen strategy, which dedicates more than EUR 7 billion to the development of decarbonised hydrogen and 6.5 GW electrolyser capacity by 2030.