March 21, 2002

    India and the United States have agreed to jointly take up programmes for shifting from Hydrocarbon energy to futuristic Hydrogen energy. The two sides decided on this in view of the fast depleting Hydrocarbon resources as well as to find a new, cost-effective renewable source of energy with a long term perspective. An agreement on this was arrived here at the just concluded two day meeting of the Indo-US Science & Technology Forum. Pioneering work has been done in this area in the United States and to a lesser extent in India. What is important is that the United States chose to have India as its partner in this area, which the US has so far kept behind closed doors, said Prof. V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology and Co-Chairman of the Indo-US Science&Technology Forum. Industry and Research & Development institutions from both the countries will be involved in this frontier science programme.

    As a first step towards this, the two sides have decided to hold a workshop on Fuel Cells in Washington in June. Fuel cells operating on hydrogen and oxygen gases were originally developed by NASA to generate electricity, heat and water in spacecraft. The current focus is on improving the design, reliability and cost to make them more competitive. Hydrogen generation from bio-mass such as bagasse from sugarcane for the fuel cells is an important area requiring equal focus. Keeping in view the field specialities, it has been decided to address fuel cells in the proposed workshop. Ten participants from each side representing Industry and R&D will take part in the Workshop, which among other things, is expected to generate proposals for joint research projects as well as lead to collaboration agreements for joint commercialisation.