Article prepared & submitted by Bidisha Banerjee
Two Unfinished Revolutions
Every winter, a familiar crisis overtakes the entire northern India when smoke from burning crop residues, blanketing the cities, become a normal view. The result, we all know is, air pollution reaching to hazardous levels. However, what is widely treated as an environmental inconvenience, is in fact, a vast untapped energy resource. India produces over 228 million tonnes of surplus agricultural biomass annually. An enormous resource that is routinely burnt, wasted, or underutilised. At the same time, the country is exploring new opportunities in advanced renewable energy technologies through green hydrogen targeting production of 5 million tonnes of green hydrogen annually by 2030. However, this strategic priority remains largely centralised and capital intensive. The question is can these unresolved crises and extraordinary opportunities be brought in together?
The Ignored Biomass Problem
Most of the agricultural biomass generated are residues from rice, wheat and sugarcane, followed by other crops that remain after harvest. Burning these residues acts as a contributor to ambient particulate matter. While schemes like Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) and Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan (GOBARdhan) offer alternatives, they absorb only a fraction of available supply and remain insufficient in scale. The existing biomass utilisation pathways, which focus on power generation, compressed biogas, palletisation for co-firing, end up absorbing only a fraction of available supply. Moreover, they also offer limited farmgate returns, despite the potential it has, to drive the rural energy security, instead of being a pollution liability.
The Hydrogen Ambition
India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission (NGHM) was a result of constant need for bringing in some advanced renewable energy technologies. The rationale behind this is that hydrogen is essential for decarbonising fertilisers, refineries, steel, and long-haul transport, where direct electrification is not viable. However, the Mission, currently, is designed in a way that it is entirely centred on large-scale electrolysis powered by solar and wind energy. Projects are concentrated in renewable-rich industrial corridors of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu. The primary end-use revolves around industrial or export offtake. In addition, the cost of electrolysis-based hydrogen remains high, currently ranging from INR 397-560/kg of hydrogen produced. Thus, the pathway requires significant land, grid infrastructure, water, and capital. In a way, India’s hydrogen ambition as currently structured generates almost no direct rural linkage. Farm households, which account for a major share in India’s workforce, have no stake in this nexus, neither as producers, suppliers, nor beneficiaries.
The Convergence in Need
There is, indeed, some thermochemistry which can integrate these two fragmented sections into one technical and strategic opportunity. Agricultural biomass can become a feedstock for hydrogen. One tonne of dry biomass can roughly produce 40 to 100 kg of hydrogen depending on the process employed. The major advantage biomass to hydrogen can provide over any other renewable energy source for producing hydrogen, is that the feedstock is already geographically distributed across every agricultural state in the country.
Technologies Worth Betting On
Not all biomass to hydrogen pathways suits Indian conditions equally. Three stand out, among all. First is biomass gasification, which is the most mature technology. In this, agricultural residues are converted into syngas at high temperatures, followed by hydrogen separation. It smoothly integrates with agri-processing clusters, and when coupled with carbon capture, it delivers carbon-negative hydrogen. Second is, anaerobic digestion with biogas reforming. This is the most immediately deployable technology where wet organic waste in the form of dung and agro-industrial effluents, produce biogas, which is then reformed further to produce hydrogen. This directly builds on India’s existing compressed biogas infrastructure, requires moderate capital, and aligns with the village-scale systems. The third technology is pyrolysis reforming which offers a modular route, where biomass is thermally decomposed to produce hydrogen precursors, with biochar as a co-product. This improves soil fertility and qualifies for carbon credits, ultimately turning, a hydrogen plant into a regenerative agriculture asset. All the three pathways share a critical benefit over electrolysis. They are inherently decentralised and scalable through replication rather than concentration.
The Missing Middle
The opportunity for convergence exists, but the policy architecture does not, yet. India’s NGHM is largely centred on renewable electricity-based electrolysis. Existing bioenergy schemes do not treat hydrogen as a priority end-use. There are no standardised biomass procurement contracts, no floor prices for hydrogen-oriented residue markets, and no dedicated financing instruments for decentralised hydrogen systems. Meanwhile, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW), Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) and the Ministry of Power (MoP) each hold a piece of this puzzle with no integrated coordination mechanism in place.
What Must Change
Thus, four interventions are essential. First, the green hydrogen mission must move beyond pilot support and create dedicated incentive streams for biomass and waste-based hydrogen. While the mission recognises these pathways, its financial and deployment focus remains overwhelmingly centred on electrolysis. Second, a dedicated part of the mission for decentralised hydrogen, analogous to SATAT for compressed biogas, must be designed with cooperative ownership at its centre, not as an afterthought. Third, targeted financial instruments, including viability gap funding, credit guarantees, interest subvention must be structured specifically for small and medium biomass to hydrogen plants. Fourth, a cross-ministerial coordination platform must be established, bringing all the relevant ministries together around a shared deployment framework.
The Way Forward
India’s hydrogen future need not be confined to large industrial hubs. It can begin in its fields. The biomass exists, the hydrogen ambition exists, what is needed now is the policy resolve to connect them. The same seasonal cycle that engulfs northern India with particulate matter every winter, can, with the right policy architecture, contribute to a decentralized hydrogen economy that reaches where electrolyzers never will, that is, into the farm, the cooperative, the rural cluster. India has never lacked resources. It has often lacked the imagination to see them as assets rather than problems. Cro residue is the recent test of that imagination. The resource is renewable. The window is not.