India should have a strategy that's focused on strengths: Jeffrey Goldmeer

Goldmeer illustrates how gas-fired generators can be the third leg of an energy storage tripod, with the other two being battery and pumped storage

India is at the cusp of energy transition and perhaps so is GE Vernova — graduating from fossil fuel to cleaner forms of energy. Jeffrey Goldmeer, Director, Energy Transition Technology Strategy and Global Hydrogen Strategy Leader, for GE Vernova, a spinoff of GE Vernova’s energy businesses, throws light on blending hydrogen with natural gas for lower emissions, something relevant for India, where around 24 gigawatts of gas-fired generators run at very low utilisation for much of the year. In a video interview with S Dinakar, Goldmeer also illustrates how gas-fired generators can be the third leg of an energy storage tripod, with the other two being battery and pumped storage. Edited excerpts:

You have mentioned the global demand for hydrogen in your paper of around 70 million tonnes. Where does India stand in this global demand?

It’s (hydrogen demand) closer to about 100 million tonnes a year. The US and China tend to sit around number one and number two, the US makes about 10 million tonnes a year. India produces about 6 to 7 million tonnes a year. So, that makes 6 to 7 per cent of total, global production. India also imports a significant amount of what I’ll call hydrogen derivatives. It imports urea and ammonia.

What is the growth in demand for hydrogen?

Globally, we see massive hydrogen growth over the next 20-plus years. The question depends on what we mean. If we really want to be producing hydrogen with low carbon intensity by adding carbon capture or using electrolysers, those methods anywhere in the world struggle to gain a foothold.

In terms of green hydrogen, India has ambitious targets of lower costs and 5 million tonnes of green hydrogen production annually by 2030.

It’s an interesting question, these 2030 targets at a specific price point. If we look at the US, it has a $1 per kilogramme target by 2030. You must realise that dollar per kilogramme is not what the customer would see because that’s a production price point and doesn’t include storage, it doesn’t include transportation. So, the number that a customer might see would be something greater than that. Is it two or three or four dollars per kilogramme? To get to that price point, you have to see large-scale reductions in the levelised cost of hydrogen, and that’s driven by the cost of electricity or the cost of your feedstock, it depends on the capacity factor utilisation rate of that electrolyser and the cost of the electrolyser. You have got to have significant amounts of installed renewables and bring the cost of that down. You have got to bring the cost of the electrolysers down and run the electrolysers at very high-capacity factors. Doing that could be a real challenge.

What role should governments globally play?

The governments have to play a larger role in terms of subsidy and sustained policy to drive this. Whether it’s the supply side, investment, or demand side investment and policy to drive this forward because hydrogen is hard to make and it’s expensive. So, we have got to drive the cost down.

What kind of policy should India have?

India should have a strategy that’s focused on what India’s strengths are and focusing on the applications that make the most sense for India. Governments must figure out, for the dollars or rupees they must invest, what makes the most sense. And, in many cases, putting hydrogen into power is one of the last things you should do with hydrogen. We should be thinking about how to take hydrogen into existing infrastructure, into existing applications, whether it’s refinery or fertiliser production, and start reducing the carbon emissions there. Do you use hydrogen for mobility for large fleet vehicles? There are lots of applications for hydrogen that might make sense before power. Now, in India, because the cost of natural gas, because it’s imported, is so high, there may be scenarios again for peaking power where hydrogen starts to make sense. But typically, we say that hydrogen for baseload power for power plants that are running, six, seven eight thousand hours a year, hydrogen today just doesn’t make sense because of the cost factor.

Coming specifically to India, in what ways is GE Vernova working specifically on issues leading to hydrogen in terms of blending into gas-fired power plants?

Let’s talk about the role that gas is going to have to play as we think about developing an energy system that’s based on significant amounts of renewables. And this is true, whether it’s India or the US or Europe, or Australia. What we see is, that as you drive your electricity system more and more towards renewables, what you start to lose is control over inertia and frequency and fundamental aspects around the grid reliability. We see gas turbines fundamentally playing this role as being a backup for renewables, but at the same time providing critical reliability functions that renewables can’t. And the great thing is some of our smaller gas turbines are capable or will be capable very soon of running on a hundred per cent hydrogen.

Don’t you see evolving battery technology as cheaper to gas-fired power plants especially because India has to import LNG at great cost?

Batteries coupled with renewables have a role, but batteries are going to be limited to how many hours they can fundamentally run. You’re not going to likely see a battery that’s going to give you 24 hours of operational time. A gas turbine can. The other thing batteries don’t do is batteries don’t provide any grid support, let’s say for frequency control. So, I can see absolutely a role for batteries, but there’s also absolutely a role for gas turbines because they are much more flexible.