NTPC Ltd has signed an agreement with GE Gas Power to demonstrate hydrogen co-firing blended with natural gas, in the latter's gas turbines installed at the former's Gujarat plant, the company said in a release. In this first-of-its-kind agreement, the two companies will likely implement a pilot project for 5% co-firing of hydrogen with natural gas at the plant.
The tie-up will help explore means to lower greenhouse gas emissions from NTPC's Kawas gas power plant in Gujarat, the company said.
Co-firing is a process where two different kinds of materials are combusted together, typically to reduce the emission of carbon. The companies seek to mitigate carbon emission from the gas-based power plants by producing more zero-carbon fuels such as hydrogen.
"As our collaboration with GE grows deeper, we are more focused to use advanced technology and leverage our gas power assets with higher percentage of zero-carbon fuels such as H2 (hydrogen), as the availability of the fuel becomes viable," Ujjwal Kanti Bhattacharya, project director of NTPC.
The comes at a time when the Centre has repeatedly cited hydrogen to be the boon of a greener energy ecosystem. The higher cost of importing electrolyser being the biggest challenge of late, the government has also said it will soon launch a production-linked incentive scheme to ramp up manufacturing of electrolyser in the country.
Despite global energy experts emphasising on the importance of hydrogen to create a greener future, the global manufacturing capacity of the electrolyser is still very low. As per report by Indian Energy Agency, the global capacity was merely 300 MW in 2020.
India had also launched the National Hydrogen Mission on Aug 15 last year which aims to make the nation a green hydrogen hub and produce 5 mln tn of green hydrogen by 2030.
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