Indian green hydrogen project developer Hygenco says it is already selling some of its renewable H2 for a lower price than grey hydrogen produced from unabated natural gas.
“For some 20-year contracts, we have priced green hydrogen below [grey] hydrogen, and we are still making money on that,” Anshul Gupta, co-founder of Hygenco, said in an interview with financial news agency Bloomberg.
Gupta estimated that grey H2 costs between $2.70 and $4 per kilogram in India, although he did not provide specific prices for renewable hydrogen produced at Hygenco’s two operational projects.
Hydrogen Insight has reached out to Hygenco for further detail on these offtake agreements.
Growing demand for natural gas in India has meant the country’s imports of methane have increased by more than 8,000% since 2003. This past summer saw more than two million tonnes of expensive LNG delivered per month between May and July.
As such, part of the Indian government’s push for green hydrogen is to displace imported natural gas with domestic renewables and thereby bolster energy security.
Hygenco currently operates two green hydrogen projects. The first, commissioned in 2022, is a pilot plant drawing on power from a 75MW solar array and a 200MW wind farm, although the exact electrolyser capacity has not been listed by the company.
The second, which started up in February this year, produces 75 tonnes a year, with plans to scale up to 250 tonnes a year. This project is also co-located with its offtaker, Jindal Stainless’ manufacturing site in the state of Haryana, which will use the H2 to anneal stainless steel.
The developer also has a third project in Maharashtra under construction, which would be capable of producing 200 tonnes of green hydrogen a year. The offtaker, Sterlite Technologies Limited, will use this H2 for industrial heat to manufacture optical fibres.
Hygenco earlier this month launched an auction to purchase more than 1GW of wind and solar power to supply a planned green ammonia plant in the Tata Steel Special Economic Zone in the state of Odisha.
The previous month, the developer had signed a memorandum of understanding with REC Limited to fund $280m of that project.
The company has previously estimated it will invest $2.5bn into building out green hydrogen and ammonia facilities in the coming years.
