India should look to biomass to ensure the energy transition to hydrogen, said Maurits Van Tol, CEO of Catalyst Technologies, a division of Johnson Matthey (JM) one of the global leaders in sustainable technologies.
Talking to businessline during India Energy Week 2025, he said: “When you look at cleantech for India, there are a few things that that I would like to highlight. First of all, biomass. There is an enormously sizable agricultural sector in India, producing a lot of agricultural by-products and agricultural waste. What can be done is to gather all these agricultural residues and convert them using technology.”
“Secondly, India has a lot of sunshine and you also have the land to build large solar parks. And when you bring renewable electricity to scale, the prices will go down further and become very attractive, to produce hydrogen. Here again we have the technology to offer to convert electricity into green hydrogen,” he said adding that “you can produce renewable electricity at a low cost that means green hydrogen at an attractive price level.”
“India can boost the yields of biomass conversion into useful components, because biomass is oxygen rich. You can bring these industries to scale, not only for exports, but also to start to decarbonise,” he added.
“The focus should be bringing together all resources – biomass, wind, solar and others. All promote decarbonisation and it helps in moving away from the dependence on fossil fuel,” he added.
“When you boost wind and solar, you have very attractive electricity prices, but also for the generation of low carbon hydrogen,” Maurits said adding that “you can combine low cost electricity and low carbon hydrogen from the onset.”
“In fact, when you scale up the output you will reduce the costs improve your competitive position and even create an export economy,” he said.
Biomass emphasised as key for India’s energy transition
