Domestic manufacturing, green hydrogen and electric vehicles to drive the show

Ahead of the 15th “Crystal” edition of the Renewable Energy India (REI) Expo, EPR Magazine caught up with Rajneesh Khattar, Senior Group Director-Energy Portfolio, Informa Markets, the show organiser, for a deep dive look at India’s changing energy landscape.

COVID-19 has exposed that dependency on external economies can sometimes become quite dangerous. Hence, the momentum of a “self-reliant India” has picked up rapidly. The federal and state governments are supporting solar manufacturing with a lot of incentives and are putting domestic content requirements for new PV projects  in place.

Many new players are booming up and joining the revolution concerning the manufacturing side. A few leading big players have also jumped on the bandwagon and are aiming to set up the entire value chain. When you see that prominent players like Reliance and Adani are making a massive investment into the manufacturing base, this spells a silver lining in the minds of the industry stakeholders and helps them gain more confidence. And this applies not only to solar but to electric vehicles and green  hydrogen.

Green Hydrogen leads in a big way
India has embarked upon a rather ambitious and robust green hydrogen mission of producing 5 MMT GH by 2030. That’d require 211 GW of solar PV energy in addition to  1,41,000 hectares of land and 168 billion litres  of water. In the latest announcements, India is talking about installing 500 GW, but if 211 GW of that goes to green hydrogen, even this 500 GW may not be enough. Green hydrogen is a scorching topic and is at the top of  the government’s agenda. Time will tell how far we’ll reach, but  all I can say with confidence and conviction is that India is moving in the right direction.

A reflection of renewable energy trends at REI Expo 2022
In the 2022 edition, a few weeks from now, I see a lot of freshness in content, a new breed of manufacturers and many international stakeholders’ participation. These  companies need a big market like India to sell their technologies and innovations and find business partners. And as I have repeatedly been mentioning, one of the key  focus areas for this year’s edition is green hydrogen. We are hosting a 2-day training workshop and a few purposeful technical sessions on GH. Another sector to see traction is e-mobility and charging infrastructure. We expect around 30,000 visitors over three days and more than 450 exhibitors from across the globe.

While the event  is spread over a 14,000 sq. mts net display area, Germany, Canada, Belgium, Israel, Singapore, and China, to name a few, on the show floor while the event is spread over a 14,000 sq. mts net display area.