Going green at Oil India
Oil India plans to set up an alternative energy subsidiary, Oil India Green Energy, by next month (July 2024).
"Our aim is to become a key market player in the alternative energy sector," says a company source. Oil India Green Energy will implement green hydrogen, renewable energy, biofuels and Compressed Biogas (CBG) production.
"We have decided on this," he tells us. "The new company is now at the approval stage; Oil India has committed Rs25,000cr ($2.9bn) CAPEX towards alternative energy; this aligns with its vision of achieving net zero by 2040."
In April 2022, Oil India commissioned a green hydrogen pilot plant at the Jorhat pump station in Assam with a capacity of 10-kg/shift of eight hours. "We can scale this up to 30-kg/day," we hear.
Oil India’s Jorhat plant produces green hydrogen from the electricity generated by a 500-KW solar plant using a 100-KW Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) electrolyser array. Oil India is also working at blending 2% green hydrogen with piped gas supplied to households at the Jorhat pump station.
Next, Oil India wants to establish a hydrogen dispensing unit at the Jorhat pump station. "To work together in the field of green hydrogen Oil India signed a MoU with Pune-based homiHydrogen in June (2022)," we hear.
Oil India is also participating as a business and operations lead in the proposed Hydrogen Valley Innovation Cluster (HVIC) in Assam, with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati as the lead partner. Since 2023, the government’s department of science and technology has been setting up HVICs in different states to promote green hydrogen by creating innovative technology and demonstrating its benefits on a small scale.
Oil India has 188-MW of solar and wind power plants in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and plans to begin CBG and CBM production soon. It's also setting up a 185-kilolitre/day biofuels plant at Numaligarh to produce ethanol from bamboo under a JV with Assam Bio-Refinery worth Rs4200cr ($503m).