Green Hydrogen – India’s bet on hydrogen made with renewable power, and whether the numbers add up.
- $2.1bn National Green Hydrogen Mission (approved outlay)
- 862,000 t production capacity awarded (across 19 companies)
- 8,000 t actually commissioned (0.16% of the 2030 target)
- 100–120 GW of new solar implied (to power 5 MMT a year)
India approved a five-million-tonne green hydrogen target for 2030. Three years in, commissioned capacity stood at roughly 8,000 tonnes a year, or 0.16% of it, with four years left.
The value is not where batteries already work. It is in steelmaking, ammonia, refining, shipping and aviation fuel, which together make up roughly a quarter of global emissions and the hardest quarter to cut. India’s interest is strategic: it imports most of its crude.
SIGHT has awarded about 862,000 tonnes a year across nineteen companies, seventeen percent of the target. Watch the gap between the seventeen percent awarded and the 0.16% actually built.
The signal to watch: Commissioned tonnes, monthly. Awarded is 862,000; built is 8,000.
Where we would take your group
- An electrolyser manufacturing line. Awarded capacity against installed capacity.
- A refinery gate. The incumbent building the first refuelling point.
- A policy economist on the auction. Where the bids cleared, and what they assumed.
Questions for the debrief
- Green hydrogen costs roughly twice grey. Early demand had to be allocated to state refiners rather than discovered. When is manufactured demand legitimate industrial policy, and when is it a subsidy trap?
- Only ~1% of the mission outlay has been spent, because disbursement is tied to commissioning. Is underspend here a failure or a working control?
- Australia, Chile, Morocco and Oman are making the same export pitch. What is India’s defensible advantage? Is it the molecule, or the engineering workforce?
