Speaking at the recent ‘Ideas of India’ summit, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari said, “Hydrogen is our future fuel and India’s future vehicles will run on hydrogen and green fuels”. He also emphasised on India’s shift towards electric vehicles in the coming years and how lithium-ion batteries will lead the shift away from petrol and diesel. “We import Rs. 16 lakh crore worth of fossil fuel every year but pretty soon our farmers will produce green fuel and green hydrogen,” he added.
The union minister reiterated that lithium-ion battery costs will come down in the coming years and that India could become a net exporter of lithium to global markets in bulk. This would not only be limited to lithium, India is also working on becoming a major exporter of green hydrogen with efforts due to show results as soon as 2025. In October 2022, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between India’s renewable energy company Greenko and Singapore’s Keppel Infrastructure to explore opportunities in green hydrogen exports from India. The two companies have been working towards an annual contract of 2,50,000 tonnes to be supplied to Keppel’s 600 Mw plant in Singapore.
While Gadkari expressed his satisfaction with the development of highways in the country, he also shared his disappointment regarding his ministry and government’s failure to curb the accident rate on Indian roads. “We wanted to reduce road accidents by 50 per cent by 2024 but we are not going to achieve it,” he said. The minister further added that to achieve this, human behaviour needs to change, as people are still not following rules of red lights, car seat belts or two wheeler helmets. He urged the society to introduce road safety education at the primary level to make Indians aware about this at a young age.
Gadkari also said that his target is to build 60 kms of roads every day and announced that new facilities like helipads and drone pads will be built on new toads for quick and emergency transport.
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The automobile industry though provides maximum revenue to the government through GST collection and also generates maximum jobs. “The worth of the automobile industry is estimated to be Rs 7.8 lakh crore. We need to double it up within five years and I need support of the Yogi government to achieve this target,” said Gadkari.