Green Hydrogen in India’s Energy Transition: Policy and Governance Pathways for Viksit Bharat 2047

Abstract

Green hydrogen has emerged as a promising solution for energy transition especially for decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors like fertilizers, steel, shipping and refineries and as an energy carrier.  It has a potential to support climate change mitigation, expanding renewable energy, environmental sustainability, industrial competitiveness and developmental vision of Viksit Bharat 2047. The research gap lies in examining whether the existing legal and policy framework is sufficient to transform the ambition of green hydrogen into a bankable and enforceable energy transition.  This study analyzes international best practices to identify the reforms in legal and policy making for strengthening the market creation, offtake security and institutional support for a large-scale deployment in India’s energy infrastructure. Green hydrogen is currently seen as a sustainable solution but less consideration is given to the legal and regulatory issues like creation of demand, certainty of contracts, certification, infrastructure coordination and stability. The findings of this research indicates that the adoption and deployment of green hydrogen becomes most viable when law and policy goes hand-in-hand where policy sets ambitious targets and incentives and law provides the binding regulatory structure for safety, standards and enforcement for creating a stable demand and reducing market risk.  The evidence suggests that captive industrial utilization especially in refineries and fertilizers offers the promising solution for its deployment for India’s clean energy transition, decarbonization and long-term developmental vision for a net zero energy future.