Hero Future Energies Goes Global, Expands To Southeast Asia, Europe

Hero Future Energies Pvt. is expanding its footprint in Southeast Asia and Europe apart from the Indian subcontinent to take advantage of opportunities in the renewable energy space. 

The company sees huge prospects in the solar, wind, and green hydrogen spaces in these countries as they plan to become energy self-sufficient and achieve the COP 26 carbon intensity targets, Srivatsan Iyer, global chief executive officer of Hero Future Energies, told BQ Prime.

Through this expansion, the company aims to achieve 5 gigawatts of renewable capacity by 2025 from 1.6 GW at present, Iyer said.

Global Footprint

Bangladesh has big plans for renewables and aims to reduce its carbon footprint as majority of its power plants are based on natural gas and fuel oil, Iyer said.

“We have received a letter-of-intent from the government of Bangladesh to set up 100-megawatt solar fisheries project,” Iyer said. “It is a 2x50 megawatt solar project based on elevated structures where farmers can row boats and do fishing as well on the site.” This is crucial as the country's main challenge is securing land, as a major portion of its land is perennially underwater, he said.

After the first 50 MW is commissioned, the company will look at the commercial viability of the second 50 MW, Iyer said, as these projects are roughly 30-50% costlier than the normal ground-mounted projects.

Hero Future Energies is also awaiting approval from the prime minister’s office for Vietnam’s 100-megawatt wind power development plan, he said. “We expect to start the work on the project in fiscal 2024.”

The company is currently preparing a detailed proposal to connect its robust pipeline of projects related to solar and battery storage in the U.K. to the grid, Iyer said. “Once the connectivity is secured, we will start work on the projects,” he said. The initial focus in the U.K. will be rooftop solar for the commercial and industrial sectors including battery storage.

The company is also in discussions with industry players for use of green hydrogen in heavy-duty transport, such as buses and trucks. "We don’t have anything formal to announce yet but we expect something to come out of this as we are pursuing it actively,” Iyer said. “At some point, we think it will have applicability in India as well.”

The company is looking at retrofitting the existing diesel buses into hydrogen instead of going for fuel cell buses, as the economics would be favorable. “The cost of hydrogen buses can be a challenge for new fuel cell buses, but with retrofit, that can be avoided.”

With the Ukraine war, Europe has become sensitive to energy self-sufficiency and green hydrogen can be the alternative to achieve that, Iyer noted.

India To Ride The Hybrid Growth

In India the major growth will come from round-the-clock hybrid (wind-solar) projects with battery storage playing a crucial role, Iyer said.

“India has set a target to reduce its carbon intensity to 45% of the 2011 levels by 2030 and secure 50% of the installed power capacity from renewables,” he said.

However, renewables alone will not be able to achieve these targets, he said, since power contributes only 20% of the total carbon emissions across the globe.

It is the hard-to-abate industries like steel, refineries, fertilisers, and corporates, especially the commercial and industrial sectors, that will have to commit to renewable energy since they are the major off-takers of electricity.

“Hero Future can play a major role in providing round-the-clock electricity to the commercial and industrial segment,” Iyer said. “To that extent, we are participating in major battery storage and green hydrogen tenders.”

“Going ahead, we see peak power and round-the-clock types of requirements to drive the growth.”

In immediate terms, the company is identifying sectors that consume conventional hydrogen that can be replaced with green hydrogen. "This would give us the way to quickly execute the projects without having to think about what to do with hydrogen produced," Iyer said.

Industries need to execute a couple of projects to learn how to reduce the cost of hydrogen and the policy framework will help in the process, he said.

The company sees the green hydrogen business evolving in the form of the distributed model, which will have fairly different economics compared with conventional hydrogen, Iyer said.

The conventional hydrogen needs to be transported in cryogenic containers, or they are converted into liquid ammonia that is reconverted to hydrogen, he said.

However, in the distributed model, the projects will be set up closer to the point of consumption, which would be smaller in size and would not require large-scale storage or long-distance travel, Iyer said. "This would help save on transportation and storage costs for the developers."

Expand The ALMM List In The Interim

The government should expand the approved list of models and manufacturers for solar panels, including foreign manufacturers in the interim, he said.

Iyer said if the country has to achieve its planned target of 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, it will require at least 20-30GW of annual capacity addition for the next eight years.

India’s peak capacity addition has never been more than 10 GW. This will improve only if domestic manufacturing capacity increases. With all the projected awards under ALMM, it would take at least two years before that capacity gets commissioned. In the interim, the foreign players should be allowed, he said.

Outlook

“The outlook is very bullish in terms of potential of renewable energy demand globally,” Iyer said. “Though it may be tempered by supply chain of critical parts as the demand is more than what can be met.”

It will require huge investments in all the critical components of the renewable sector from rare earth metals to silicones to cells to modules to achieve the set targets by all the major economies, he said.

“If the situation continues in Europe with Ukraine and Russia war, and everything that followed the COP-26 meet, I am sure renewable energy will have a huge role to play in creating energy security,” he said.

“The world is thinking of renewable energy a lot faster than the ability of supply chain to support the demand,” Iyer said.