Achieving Net Zero state would mean reduction of emissions from all sources to zero. Adar Poonawalla-backed cleantech startup, h2e Power Systems, will be powering SII’s transition to renewable and green energy.
The world’s largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India (SII), could soon become the world’s first company to produce a ‘Green Vaccine’. The vaccine major firm is also aspiring to be the first `Net Zero’ pharma company in the world.
Achieving Net Zero state would mean reduction of emissions from all sources to zero. Adar Poonawalla-backed cleantech startup, h2e Power Systems, will be powering SII’s transition to renewable and green energy. Pune-based h2e Power is India’s first homegrown green hydrogen and fuel cell company. h2e is now working on the SII blueprint to achieve Net Zero status. h2e is founded by Siddharth R Mayur, Amarnath Chakradeo and Bhavana S Mayur and incubated at IIT-SINE. Poonawalla invested in the company and acquired a 50% stake early this year and it is now a Poonawalla Group company.
Mayur, founder and MD of h2e Power, said they are completing the detailing on paper before embarking on implementing the project. “We expect to start implementation by mid-2021 and complete phase-I by December 2021. The plan is to make them Net-Zero by 2024-2025,” said Mayur.
By March 2021, they will have clarity on capacity, investments, savings and emission reduction and there will be substantial gains, he said. Take, for example, SII spends a lot of energy on storing vaccines and they can go to a stage when they will not need to use any fossil fuel for the cooling needs and have no emissions, Mayur said.
h2e is betting on fuel cells and hydrogen becoming as common as wind and solar energy in the coming years. He expects the market in India would take two to three years to develop. “India is on the cusp of a big energy revolution. With technologies like the fuel cell and waste to hydrogen India can become 100% energy independent,” Mayur said.
“Hydrogen and fuel cells are going to be a key driver in achieving this goal. With heaps of domestic, agriculture and industrial waste piling up all around, we have great potential to convert them into renewable hydrogen,” he said.
h2e is working out multiple modules for SII that would include solar, hydrogen, synthetic gas, JP8 Fuel. They plan to use the hydrogen / Syngas for their process plants and electricity purposes, using fuel cell technology for the chillers and vaccine transport vehicles, Mayur said. h2e has tied up with US-based Ways2H, a waste to hydrogen company, to produce green hydrogen from waste in India.
Poonawalla had helped h2e Power acquire a Swiss fuel cell specialist, Hexis AG. h2e Power also acquired mPower GmbH in Germany. Poonawalla, who is also chairman of h2e Power, had said: “We intend to reach every home, every commercial establishment and every city with our hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. We are building a large manufacturing capacity in Pune for Indian and global markets.”
Fuel cell technology is pegged to be the energy alternative for the future. The company plans to install its first plant in Pune. According to Mayur, this would be the largest fuel cell facility in the country and would have a capacity of 100 MW, Mayur said. h2e will produce hydrogen for fuel cell electric vehicles and also set up a downstream facility to produce fuels such as methanol/kerosene.
