In light of the current environmental conditions, the climate change and global warming realities being faced by the planet and humanity, human race is on a quest to find out a sustainable alternative for our fuel and energy requirement to avoid a global climate catastrophe and Hydrogen looks like an astounding contender in this space.

We are living in an era of hydrogen hype. It’s often considered as the fuel for the future, even to the extent that some call it gold or key negotiation tool or currency of future. Hydrogen has a very high energy density, three times that of petrol or diesel, and because its use produces only water instead of greenhouse gases and other exhaust pollutants, thus it is considered an ecofriendly and green fuel. 

Furthermore, using petrol and diesel in combustion engines waste at least two thirds of the energy in the fuel, whereas hydrogen can be used in fuel cells, which are about twice as efficient, so much more of the fuel’s energy is put to good use and less fuel is needed. Leading automobile manufacturers like Toyota has already come out with the prototypes and running concept vehicles on road, powered by hydrogen as a key fuel.

 

However, hydrogen is not that easy and handy to produce. In spite of being the most abundant element in the universe today, it isn’t something that can be mined from ore like most of the metals or our fossil fuels. Neither it is a renewable resources like Sunlight, Water, Wind or Wave that can be tapped in from nature. In fact, some people go to the extent that they define Hydrogen as not an energy source but an energy carrier. It’s only because of the very process involved in production of hydrogen.

Based on the production mechanism, Hydrogen is given a color. That’s how there’s a complete spectrum of colored hydrogen in the industry today. Green, blue, brown, yellow, turquoise and pink – are the various colors of hydrogen, which’re essentially color codes, or nicknames, used within the energy industry to differentiate between the types of hydrogen, based on the production mechanism.

The most common ways of production are coal gasification or Water electrolysis, which are both energy hungry processes. Now the colors are decided upon the source of energy for making the above two processes happen. Which can be fossils, solar, hydro, wind or nuclear power. That’s why, people consider hydrogen to be a useful way of carrying energy from renewable sources to useful applications such as a car. 

The IEA (International Energy Agency) examines the full spectrum of energy issues including oil, gas and coal supply and demand, renewable energy technologies, electricity markets, energy efficiency, access to energy, demand side management and much more. Through its work, the IEA advocates policies that will enhance the reliability, affordability and sustainability of energy in its 31 member countries, 11 association countries and beyond. In the year 2023, they published a paper called “Towards hydrogen definitions based on their emissions intensity”, which documents that – 

“Production based on unabated fossil fuels can result in emissions of up to 27 kg CO2‑eq/kg H2, depending on the level of upstream and midstream emissions. Conversely, producing hydrogen from biomass with CO2 capture and storage can result in negative emissions, as a result of removing the captured biogenic carbon from the natural carbon cycle. The average emissions intensity of global hydrogen production in 2021 was in the range of 12-13 kg CO2‑eq/kg H2. In the IEA Net Zero by 2050 Scenario, this average fleet emissions intensity reaches 6‑7 kg CO2‑eq/kg H2 by 2030 and falls below 1 kg CO2‑eq/kg H2 by 2050.”

However, this is yet another race in which the emerging new Bharat is wanting to take a lead by setting up new standards ahead of the IEA or rest of the world. In year 2023, on 19th of August, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India came up with new emissions cap of 2 kg carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent for 1 kg of renewable hydrogen (H2) as a 12-month average to establish a standard for the nascent industry to help its production and trade. But the big question is – how to make it happen? When the World or the G7 countries are still struggling at 27 kg CO2‑eq/kg H2, how can we manage to meet a target higher by 13 + times?

Nature has the solution for everything. There are still other natural processes like many types of microbes, which can produce hydrogen as a natural byproduct of their metabolic activity. This is often referred to as Biohydrogen, which is the greenest form of Hydrogen.

Hydrogen produced through the action of living organisms is called biohydrogen. This is a type of biofuel, like bio-ethanol, bio-diesel or bio-gas or bio-oil. There are three classes of biofuels: -

1. First generation – made from food crops

2. Second generation – made from non-food crops or wastes

3. Third generation (advanced) - made using microbes

Advanced biofuels have several advantages over 1st and 2nd generation biofuels. Whereas first generation biofuels have caused increases in food prices, advanced biofuels would not. In comparison to second generation biofuels, advanced biofuels could capture sunlight energy 10 times more efficiently, meaning that smaller areas or land are needed to produce enough fuel. Biohydrogen is an example of an advanced biofuel (or third generation biofuel). In advanced biofuel technologies, microbes are grown in special bioreactors and provided with the energy and nutrients that they need including, sunlight, waste organic material, CO2 from the air or from conventional gas plants. As they grow the microbes produce the biofuel.

Among the advanced biofuels, biohydrogen is particularly attractive because of the excellent properties of hydrogen as a fuel and because biohydrogen is very easy to collect from the bioreactor. Conversely, biofuels such as bio-oils have to be purified from the microbial cells which is complex and expensive.

In the year 2023, Government of India released the 1st Waterbody census report, from Ministry of Jal Shakti, Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Minor Irrigation (Statistics) Wing, which says

“24,24,540 water bodies have been enumerated in the country, out of which 97.1% (23,55,055) are in rural areas and only 2.9% (69,485) are in urban areas. 59.5% (14,42,993) of water bodies are ponds, followed by tanks (15.7%, i.e. 3,81,805), reservoirs (12.1%, i.e. 2,92,280), Water conservation schemes / percolation tanks/check dams (9.3%, i.e., 2,26,217), lakes (0.9%, i.e. 22,361) and others (2.5%, i.e. 58,884).”

Now, this can be a huge infrastructure for supporting the hydrogen economics, especially because we already have technology to restore the native ecology for restoration of the ecosystem services. Now this means, all those microbes that can produce hydrogen naturally can be hosted in these Waterbodies, e.g.,  Enterobactericiae, Escherichia coli, methylotrophs, methanogenes, thermophilic archae, Ruminococcus albus, Cyanobacteria, (viz., Anabaena, Synechococcus, and Oscillatoria sp.), A. cylindrica, A. variabilis, Synechococcus sp. etc. are all know to be producing hydrogen intheir natural metabolic activities, often without any production of CO2, which means Absolutely, Low cost, and sustainable GREEN Hydrogen production, meeting the objectives of the global fuel industry. We just need to research and develop technology to measure and capture the production from an all-open natural Waterbody, for which we already have adequate number of institution and research bodies spread across the country.