As part of the National Green H₂ Mission, the Union Government has sanctioned three pilot projects for use of H₂ in steel production. Earlier the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy had issued guidelines for implementation of pilot projects in the steel sector under this mission.

The objectives of the scheme were to identify advance technologies for utilizing green H₂ in steelmaking, through pilot projects. These pilot projects can demonstrate safe and secure operations of green H₂-based steel making processes, validating technical feasibility and performance, evaluating their economic viability thereby leading to low-carbon iron and steel production. Accordingly, the proposals were invited for three components: pilot project to produce DRI using 100 % H₂ using vertical shaft, use of H₂ in blast furnace to reduce coal/coke consumption and injection of H₂ in vertical shaft based DRI making unit.

Based on the evaluations of the proposals received, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has sanctioned total three pilot projects in the steel sector, Matrix Gas and Renewables Ltd (Consortium members: Gensol Engineering Ltd, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, Metsol AB, Sweden) with pilot plant capacity 50 tpd, Simplex Castings Ltd (Consortium member: BSBK Pvt. Ltd., Ten Eight Investment, IIT Bhilai) with pilot plant capacity 40 tpd and the Steel Authority of India Ltd (Ranchi) with plant capacity 3,200 tpd.

The total financial support made available will be $3.4 B from the Government of India. These pilot projects are likely to be commissioned in next 3 years, paving way to the scaleup of such technologies in India.