Telephonic Talk between Union Minister for Power and MNRE, RK Singh and John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate

John Kerry has congratulated India on achievements in renewable energy on reaching 146GW Renewables with 63 GW under construction and 25 GW under bids. Union Minister R.K. Singh has informed Kerry about India’s plan to emerge as a Global leader in Green Hydrogen.

India is proposing to mandate using green hydrogen in fertilizer and in refining. This is part of the Government’s commitment towards replacing grey hydrogen with green hydrogen. This was stated by Union Minister for power and MNRE RK Singh in a telephonic talk with John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) here last evening.

Singh underlined to the US Presidential envoy, that the Hon’ble Prime Minister,  Narendra Modi places the highest importance on the environment.  He suggested to him that India and USA could work together in the areas of innovations for power and technology, pointing out the requirement of bringing down the cost of storage of renewable power. India is in the process for inviting bids for 4000 Megawatt hour of battery storage.

The Minister informed Kerry about the recent milestone the country had achieved by crossing 100 GW in Installed Solar and Wind Capacity. If we add Hydro capacity also, the total installed renewable capacity is 147 MW. Further, 63 GW of renewable capacity is under construction which makes India one of the fastest growing in terms of renewable capacity addition.

Singh also informed  Kerry that the National Hydrogen Energy Mission has been launched to enable cost competitive green hydrogen production. He added that India would be conducting competitive bids for green hydrogen in next 3-4 months to pave the road for viable usage of hydrogen as a fuel. India is looking at bids for 4000 MW of electrolysers capacity.   The other countries need to come up with more electrolyser plants to bring down the costs.

It was suggested that India and USA should work at setting up an alternate supply chain for lithium in order to secure inputs material for battery Energy Storage. Singh and  Kerry are expected to meet shortly to take forward discussions on Energy Transition.