IOC to build India's 1st green hydrogen plant

New Delhi: India's largest oil firm IOC will build the nation's first 'green hydrogen' plant at its Mathura refinery, as it aims to prepare for a future catering to the growing demand for both oil and cleaner forms of energy.

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) has drawn a strategic growth path that aims to maintain focus on its core refining and fuel marketing businesses while making bigger inroads into petrochemicals, hydrogen and electric mobility over the next 10 years, its chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya said.

The company will not set captive power plants at all its future refinery and petrochemical expansion projects and instead use the 250 MW of electricity it produces from renewable sources like solar power, he said in an interview.

"We have a wind power project in Rajasthan. We intend to wheel that power to our Mathura refinery and use that electricity to produce absolutely green hydrogen through electrolysis," he said.

This will be the nation's first green hydrogen unit. Previously, projects have been announced to produce 'grey hydrogen' using fossil fuels such as natural gas. Hydrogen is a clean fuel but manufacturing it is energy-intensive and has carbon byproducts. Brown hydrogen is created through coal gasification while the process of producing grey hydrogen throws off carbon waste. Blue hydrogen uses carbon capture and storage for the greenhouse gases produced in the creation of grey hydrogen. Green hydrogen production - ultimate clean hydrogen resource - uses renewable energy to create fuel.