Active Players in Green hydrogen market

One of the questions quite often asked is what companies / stocks can we invest for a long term horizon?
While we have discussed some of these companies in the thread earlier, wanted to give an update, now that the Green hydrogen market is getting heated up with carbon foot print reduction Target , export potential, Govt incentives for electrolysers and Govt subsidy scheme for Green hydrogen production.

Recap

Why do we need green hydrogen ?

Most environmentally sustainable Energy source produced by splitting water by electrolysis powered by renewable energy Solar/ Wind/ Hydro.
Which means you need Sunlight , Wind & Water for producing Green Hydrogen which are plenty on mother Earth.

What can Green Hydrogen do for us?

Requirement of hydrogen was always there for different industries since time immemorial.

(a) Fertilisers industry needs Hydrogen as the feedstock for producing Ammonia NH3 and then to DAP (Di ammonium phosphate) which is extensively used for growing food crops. .

(b)Petroleum refineries around the world need Hydrogen for Refining fuel in a process called
hydrodesulphurisation.

(c) Many other industries like chemical , metallurgical , steel iron etc also need hydrogen for different processes.

However, Hydrogen was being sourced either from methane CH4 or Coal by a chemical process which produces carbon as a bye product. Now that Carbon foot print , green house Gas is a big issue threatening climate change, Hydrogen requirement needs to be sourced through non carbon sources which does not result in carbon emissions and water splitting through electrolysis is an obvious choice. And if we use renewable energy for splitting water ,the hydrogen produced is called green hydrogen.

what else Green Hydrogen can do for us?

(a) Thermal power plants use coal as Energy source which produce a lot of carbon emissions.
Green hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water by Solar wind energy can replace Thermal power plants in a phased manner. How ? (Answered in next question)

(b) Green hydrogen can fuel automobiles in an IC engine or in a Fuel cell. However , it requires hydrogen refueling stations , pipelines infrastructure to be made. However the technology for making hydrogen automobiles are already in place

(c) Green hydrogen can be used as a kitchen fuel. currently the pipelines are not capable of handling hydrogen gas. However , it can be mixed with natural gas up to 5% with existing infrastructure

(d) Ammonia made out of Green hydrogen can be a good hydrogen carrier and can be transported easily. Ammonia can also be used as a fuel.
Ammonia can be used to produce DAP.

Why Renewable energy from Solar / Wind can not be used directly and fed to Power Grid in line with power from thermal power plant and How Green hydrogen can replace Thermal power plant ?

Thermal power plants can run 24X7 whether it is day and night or rainy weather. It is not the case with Solar / wind which is not available 24×7.
So, Renewable energy produced from solar/ wind can not be fed to the grid as it would lead to grid instability. To avoid this instability , the excessive renewable energy produced in day time needs to be stored so that the energy can be used in the night. so it calls for huge and bulky battery storage solution for mega electricity storage. And lithium ion battery has limited availability.

However if the excess renewable power produced in day time can be used to split water to hydrogen which can then easily be stored and during the lean hours of night, can be used with the help of a fuel cell to produce electricity when renewable energy not available Therefore , grid stability can be ensured.

With this recap , let us discuss various players in Green hydrogen market.

Currently, Most Energy consumer/ energy intensive Industries are the most carbon producers- Steel & Aluminum, Fertilisers , Petroleum refineries, Chemical, Cement and many others in manufacturing sector.

These industries are putting up Renewable energy plants in terms of Solar & Wind to reduce carbon foot prints- whether it is TISCO or Jindal steel or many others.

Oil refineries are the ones which not only consume a lot of conventional energy, (use power produced by NTPC for example produced from coal ) , but these are the ones which need a lot of hydrogen which currently being produced from Natural gas or coal. They also produce and sell a lot of petroleum products like diesel petrol which in turn produce Carbon. so the oil refiners are desperate to produce Green hydrogen in order to reduce carbon foot print.

Leading PSU’s those who have targets to set up green hydrogen plants
NTPC, GAIL,ONGC, IOCL BPCL, HPCL, Coal India Some of them have already announced huge fund raising plan through rights issue.

There are top 3 Leading EPC players gearing up for end to end solutions for Green Hydrogen
Adani, Reliance, L&T along with backward integration to manufacture electrolysers.

The other EPC players for Green hydrogen are *Tata power with its arm Tata projects, Thermax, Hero future energy, *

Then there are a lot of Pure play Renewables some of them are planning to jump to Green hydrogen EPC as well… players such as Tata power,JSW energy, KPI, Inox wind, Suzlon, Borosil renewables, Sterling & Wilson, ReNew, ACME, Greenko

There are some IPP – independent power producers of conventional thermal powerplant such as NTPC , Tata power, Adani power, CESC, Torrent , JSW power would like to reduce carbon foot print and go for renewables / Green hydrogen.

Then there are PSU companies like NHPC and SJVN which are in renewables since decades have plans to jump to Green hydrogen as IPP and also EPC.

Then comes the Electrolyser & Fuel cell manufacturing.

While all the 3 leading players Adani , Reliance
& L&T have already lined up foreign collaboration for electrolysers such as
Stiesdal, Hydrogen pro There are few more stand alone electrolyser manufacturers those who have put up plant in India- Ohmium for PEM electrolyser, Greenko-John Cockerill for alkaline electrolyser, and H2e for AEM electrolyser

And the most important ones are the MSME’s who would serve as small ancillaries for the entire value chain.

Let us keep this post updated with new names not mentioned in this post

Discl: This is not a recommendation to buy or sell stocks listed / unlisted discussed in this post. This is only for educational and information purpose.
please do your own assessment before investing in any stocks .