Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways (MoRTH), Nitin Gadkari championed the cause of green hydrogen as the means to evolve and attain carbon neutrality in the future.

Speaking at the Symposium on International Automotive Technology (SIAT) 2021, organised by ARAI, the Minister said, “Green hydrogen has been termed as the fuel of the future that can help attain carbon neutrality.”

Gadkari said that while the government has already outlined the standards related to the safety of green hydrogen, what’s needed is to innovate cost-effective storage solutions for its safe handling and transportation.

For the effective use of green hydrogen in automotive and transportation applications, Gadkari encouraged collaboration between the automotive industry and India’s aerospace agency – ISRO – as well as oil PSU – IOCL. The idea would be sharing of knowledge from the experience and expertise of these institutions with handling hydrogen. “The collaboration of auto industry with ISRO and IOCL must be promoted”, he remarked.

Moreover, the union minister highlighted the research being conducted with respect to hydrogen fuel cells in India’s premiere engineering institute – IIT Chennai.

The shifting dynamics towards electrification was on the minister’s agenda in his speech at the virtual event, and Gadkari updated that the National Highways Authority of India (NHA) is developing charging infrastructure along highways, as well as simultaneously considering use of alternative fuels like Ethanol and Methanol.

Even in the past, the union minister has extensively encouraged use of these fuels as blend to reduce the overdependence on fossil sources. “Ethanol is an eco-friendly bio-fuel that also provides an additional source of income to farmers,” Gadkari said.

Gadkari took Brazil’s example and said, “It’s impressive how Brazil has been using Ethanol. We are also planning to introduce flex-fuel vehicles like the US, Brazil and Canada.”

“Brazil has 83 percent vehicles running on flex-fuels, we have a similar ambition for India’s transportation sector too,” he added.

The union minister appealed the ARAI to take the challenge upon themselves and develop BS VI equivalent of flex-fuel engines to curtail pollution, as well as create more jobs.