Science & Technology

Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh says, India has the potential to be a Green Hydrogen exporter

Addresses the International Conference of Green Hydrogen 2023 organized by Government of India

Dr Jitendra Singh says Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi approved the launch of the National Green Hydrogen Mission with a budgetary outlay of about 2.4 billion dollars and it reflects India’s firm resolve to address the difficult challenges of de-carbonization on our pathways to Net Zero in 2070

Hydrogen Mission has great potential for job generation through Startup ecosystem through creation of a mechanism for harnessing proactive support of Banking Finances: Dr Jitendra Singh

India has been at the forefront of the global narrative for fighting climate change and has done far more than what would be a commensurate response that would be called for on account of our historical or even our current per capita carbon emissions: Dr Jitendra Singh

NEW DELHI :- Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that India has the potential to be a Green Hydrogen exporter.

 

Addressing the International Conference of Green Hydrogen 2023, Dr Jitendra Singh said, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi approved the launch of the National Green Hydrogen Mission with a budgetary outlay of about 2.4 billion dollars and it reflects India’s firm resolve address the difficult challenges of de-carbonization on our pathways to Net Zero in 2070.

Dr Jitendra Singh pointed out the painstaking efforts undertaken over the last two years since the Prime Minister had announced India’s intention to create a dedicated mission for Green Hydrogen culminating in the announcement of the National Green Hydrogen Mission in January this Year.

The Minister said, India has been at the forefront of the global narrative for fighting climate change and has done far more than what would be a commensurate response that would be called for on account of our historical or even our current per capita carbon emissions.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, India is uniquely poised to emerge as a prominent global leader in production of Green Hydrogen not just on the basis of its abundant renewable energy resources and the benefits of one of the world’s lowest costs of regeneration, but also because of its R&D ecosystem and the framework designed for R&D in cross-cutting sectors of hydrogen production, transport, electrolyze manufacturing, support infrastructure, fuel cell EVs, storage and utilisation.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, as Minister for Science and Technology, it's wonderful to see the positive synergy between the private sector and academic institutions and he hoped that this translates into effective collaboration in every field of research required in the expansion of possibilities of Green Hydrogen.

Dr Jitendra Singh also pointed out that Hydrogen Mission has great potential for job generation through the Startup ecosystem as India has emerged number three in the world with about one lakh startups and 100 odd Unicorns in various sectors including in cutting edge science frontiers. He said, Indian Startup system proposed to create a mechanism for harnessing proactive support of Banking Finances.

Dr Jitendra Singh informed that a draft R&D Roadmap for Green Hydrogen Ecosystem in India has been released and thanked Professor Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor and his team and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy For this milestone. A public-private partnership framework for R&D called the Strategic Hydrogen Innovation Partnership or SHIP will be facilitated under the Mission. The Framework will entail creating a dedicated R&D fund, with contributions from Industry and Government institutions, the Minister added.

The R&D programme under the Mission will seek to develop globally competitive technologies in various segments. Consortium-based approach and leveraging the strengths of each institution/industry will be encouraged.

The Minister said India will also leverage the inherent strengths and technological experience of institutions such as BARC, ISRO, CSIR, IITs, IISc and many more and expressed confidence that this will see some path breaking research that will come out of the exercise and create huge multiplier effects on the domestic green hydrogen manufacturing sector in this decade and the next.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, it is encouraging to see that the Conference has provided a platform for all stakeholders to come together and deliberate on the great global challenges facing humanity in the form of climate change and to discuss one of the most promising pathways for decarbonizing hard to abate sectors through green hydrogen.

The variety of speakers was an excellent mix of technical experts, scientists and private sector practitioners, as well as public policy experts, internationally reputed innovators and offtake industries and it brought to fore the exemplary need to create such platforms for industry academia collaboration.

In his address, Professor Ajay Sood said, Green Hydrogen is here to stay and informed that so far 16 nations have announced Green Hydrogen Mission Plans. He said, an integrated approach is needed to minimise failure to this Mission and it should be looked at from five viewpoints-technical, commercial, regulatory, product integration and logistics.

 

The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with about 14.9 lakh schools, 95 lakh teachers, and nearly 26.5 crore students from varied socio-economic backgrounds. Department of School Education & Literacy, Ministry of Education, devised Performance Grading Index (PGI) for States and UTs which assesses the performance of school education system at the State/UT level by creating an index for comprehensive analysis. The PGI - States/UTs was first released for the year 2017-18 and so far, has been released up to the year 2020-21.

Over the period, many of the indicators in PGI – States/UTs have been outlived and become redundant. Also, the structure of PGI – States/UTs has been heavily tilted towards the indicators related to Governance Processes rather than the quality indicators. Therefore, to have more updated base with quality indicators, to align with new initiatives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, to monitor indicators relating to Goal 4 of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and to replace existing indicators which have achieved optimal target, the PGI – State structure for 2021-22 has been revised and renamed as PGI 2.0. In PGI 2.0 , the data source for many of the indicators has been the data from UDISE+ and the grades have been aligned with the PGI - District to have uniformity and better comparability.

The new PGI structure covers 73 indicators, focused more on qualitative assessment besides including digital initiatives and teacher education. The grades/level obtained by States/UTs in previous edition of the PGIs are thus not comparable as with the grades/levels obtained by States/UTs in this new edition.

The PGI 2.0 structure comprises of 1000 points across 73 indicators grouped into 2 categories viz., Outcomes, Governance Management (GM). These categories are further divided into 6 domains, viz., Learning Outcomes (LO), Access (A), Infrastructure & Facilities (IF), Equity (E), Governance Process (GP) & Teachers Education and Training (TE&T).

PGI 2.0 for 2021-22 classified the States/UTs into ten grades viz., highest achievable Grade is Daksh, which is for State/UT scoring more than 940 points out of total of 1000 points.  The lowest grade is Akanshi-3 which is for score up to 460.  The ultimate aim of PGI 2.0 is to propel States & UTs towards undertaking multi-pronged interventions that will bring about the much-desired optimal education outcomes covering all dimensions. Indicators of PGI 2.0 have been aligned to policy initiatives and interventions introduced post implementation of National Education policy (NEP) 2020 for proper tracking the progress.  The PGI 2.0 is expected to help States and UTs to pinpoint the gaps and accordingly prioritize areas for intervention to ensure that the school education system is robust at every level.

PGI 2.0 scores and grades achieved by States/UTs in 2021-22 bear a testimony to the efficacy of the PGI system. The indicator-wise PGI 2.0 score shows the areas where a State/UT needs to improve.

PGI 2.0 report for 2021-22 can be accessed at https://www.education.gov.in/statistics-new?shs_term_node_tid_depth=391&Apply=Apply

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