The Indian Oil Corporation has finalised the cost estimate for its planned green hydrogen production plant at its Panipat Refinery and Petrochemical Complex in northwestern India.
The plant is slated to be ready by December 2027 and marks Indian Oil’s entry into the green hydrogen space.
Once complete, the 10,000 tonnes-per-year facility will be one of the largest green hydrogen plants in the country.
“The green hydrogen produced will replace fossil-derived hydrogen in refinery operations, resulting in [a] substantial reduction in carbon emissions,” said the company in a statement.
Most of the hydrogen used in oil refining goes towards hydrocracking and desulphurisation. The grey hydrogen that is generally used is produced primarily through steam methane reforming of natural gas, which is a highly emissions-intensive process.
It is estimated that oil refining contributes towards around 4% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing fossil fuel-based hydrogen with green hydrogen could ultimately avoid around 80,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, according to BP, who based this figure on a green hydrogen project in Lingen, Germany.
A separate study by TotalEnergies found that the use of green hydrogen could avoid the emissions of around five million tonnes of CO2 each year from the company’s European refineries by 2030.
Indian Oil’s project fits with India’s formal green hydrogen mission, which was approved in 2023 with the aim to develop green hydrogen production capacity of at least five million tonnes per year.
In line with this, the board of Indian Oil approved an additional equity investment of approximately $127m in its Terra Clean subsidiary to develop 4.3GW of additional renewable energy projects.
Building on its existing renewable energy portfolio which totals 238.7MW (from wind and solar), Indian Oil aims to scale up to 31GW of capacity by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2046.
