India’s push to decarbonize rail transport has reached a technical inflection point, with a 1 MW green hydrogen pilot project now in the final stages of commissioning and set to supply fuel for the country’s first hydrogen-powered train.
While modest in scale, the project serves as a critical test of whether hydrogen traction can move beyond policy ambition into operational reality within one of the world’s largest rail networks.
The pilot is designed to produce green hydrogen via electrolysis using renewable electricity, aligning with India’s broader National Green Hydrogen Mission. At 1 MW, the facility is not intended to support large-scale fleet deployment but rather to validate production reliability, fuel quality, storage, and integration with rail operations. This distinction matters. Rail applications require consistent hydrogen supply, strict safety controls, and predictable refueling cycles, constraints that have limited hydrogen trains globally to demonstration corridors rather than network-wide adoption.
Hydrogen-powered trains are typically positioned as an alternative to diesel on non-electrified routes, particularly where full electrification is capital intensive or geographically complex. In India, this is a significant consideration. Despite rapid electrification progress, a meaningful share of routes still rely on diesel locomotives. Hydrogen traction offers a pathway to eliminate tailpipe emissions without extending overhead lines, but only if fuel production and logistics can be managed at competitive cost and scale.
The commissioning phase of the pilot suggests that engineering and integration hurdles are being addressed, but it does not resolve the central economic question. Green hydrogen production costs in India remain higher than diesel on an energy-equivalent basis, even with falling renewable power prices. A 1 MW electrolyzer can typically produce only a few hundred kilograms of hydrogen per day, sufficient for limited trial operations rather than sustained commercial service. This reinforces the project’s role as a learning platform rather than a near-term replacement for diesel traction.
From a systems perspective, the project also tests coordination between hydrogen production, storage, and end use in a mobile application. Railways impose tighter operational tolerances than stationary industrial hydrogen users. Any disruption in hydrogen supply directly affects service reliability, which places pressure on electrolyzer uptime, compression systems, and storage infrastructure. These factors, rather than propulsion technology alone, will shape the scalability of hydrogen rail in India.
The pilot aligns with international trends, where hydrogen trains have been deployed primarily in Europe and East Asia as demonstrators rather than mass-market solutions. Experience elsewhere shows that hydrogen rail projects tend to depend on public funding and policy support, particularly during early stages when utilization rates are low and unit costs are high. India’s approach appears consistent with this pattern, using a limited-scale project to generate operational data before committing to broader rollout decisions.
