Netherlands provides to be India’s ‘gateway’ to gas EU’s inexperienced shift

With the Russia-Ukraine disaster resulting in rise in oil and gasoline costs, there’s a rethink of power dependency on Russia among the many European nations. The Netherlands is taking a look at decreasing its power dependency with Russia “as soon as possible”, whereas exploring options together with inexperienced hydrogen within the coming occasions.

“One of the things that is crystal clear now is that we should have done more in the last 10 years as a continent as Europeans, but also as Dutch to make sure we create more energy independence. We have talked about it for 10 years, potentially even longer, and we’ve done too little. Now, this clearly is something that is very much a topic again and we will make sure we get that energy independence as quickly as possible. I talked to the US Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken and Minister (Annalena) Baerbock from Germany and to many other colleagues. We will make sure we see this through and we will make sure we become energy independent of Russia ASAP,” Netherlands’ Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra stated in an interplay with Indian journalists.

“We cannot organise that tomorrow. For the Netherlands, the burden isn’t that high but for some of our friends in Europe, the burden is quite high. But we will see it through and we will do it as quickly as possible. And we will do it together with the whole European EU family,” he added.

The conflict in Ukraine has put dialogue round power dependence in a quicker transition mode, stated the Netherlands’ Climate Envoy Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme, including there’s potential for the Netherlands and India to discover commerce in inexperienced hydrogen.

“One of the alternatives is green hydrogen. As it happens, it is one of the goals for India to become a net exporter of green hydrogen, we could become a net importer because the Netherlands doesn’t have enough space to produce all the green hydrogen ourselves. That’s not just for energy intensive industries, but also for transport and household usages. Potentially, gas could be replaced by green hydrogen,” he stated.

The Netherlands might turn out to be a facilitator for export of inexperienced hydrogen from India to Europe, Jaime stated.

“The Netherlands is well-positioned to be your gateway to the rest of Europe, with the Port of Rotterdam as Europe’s biggest port, linking to Northern European countries including Germany and Belgium. There’s a potential to explore for our two countries,” he added.

The Netherlands is at current in dialogue with the business as a result of they’re within the means of inserting orders. “So the question is how do we structure it and what infrastructure do we need? Are you going to ship hydrogen as ammonia or in frozen form? All that needs to be agreed to see which way is the best. Right now, Singapore and Japan are the furthest developed in importing green hydrogen, so we are looking at them also to set the standard and to see what is the standard going forward,” Jaime stated.

Going forward, investments from the Netherlands — the fifth largest international investor for India — might see a shift in direction of renewables from fossil fuels, he added. As per calculations by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), India wants about $42 billion over the interval until 2030 per 12 months for the annual renewal power investments.

The Netherlands is working with India on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on renewable power, which is more likely to be taken up for dialogue throughout the upcoming go to of President Ram Nath Kovind subsequent week to the nation.

“There are several areas of collaboration, such as research, knowledge, building plants and infrastructure such as ports and solar and wind generation. All these areas need to be mapped out and severely reduce emissions if we are to preserve a futureproof planet,” Jaime stated.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whereas talking on the third Re-inVest Conference in November 2020, had introduced plans to launch a complete National Hydrogen Energy Mission. Last week, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari travelled to Parliament in a hydrogen-based gas cell electrical automobile (FCEV), in what could possibly be interpreted as a powerful indication of a shift in stance by the Centre that has to this point backed typical battery-powered electrical automobiles, or BEVs.

In the Union Budget for 2021-22 final 12 months, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed launching a Hydrogen Energy Mission in 2021-22 for producing hydrogen from inexperienced energy sources.

Last month, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy introduced a 13-point Green Hydrogen Policy detailing the assorted incentives and methods to fabricate inexperienced hydrogen.