India-EU Hydrogen Partnership Flagship Project Collapsing Due to Ruinous Economics – CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

---

The EU-India Clean Energy and Climate Partnership included a plan to develop a waste-to-hydrogen facility in Pune, led by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and The Green Billions Limited (TGBL). The ₹450 crore ($54M) project was intended to process 3.8 million metric tons of waste using Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF) and plasma gasification technology to produce 10 tons of hydrogen daily. Unsurprisingly, the economics made no sense, it would have been a climate action failure, and the plan didn’t get out of the starting gate, never mind to the finish line.

Waste-to-hydrogen is being positioned as a potential solution for waste management by converting municipal solid waste into hydrogen through processes like plasma gasification and RDF treatment. This approach seeks to divert waste from landfills while producing a fuel that can be used in industrial applications or transportation. However, waste-to-hydrogen remains an emerging technology with high capital costs, energy-intensive processes, and questions about lifecycle emissions, particularly if the hydrogen is ultimately used in inefficient applications.

In contrast, waste-to-energy (WTE) has been widely deployed for decades, using combustion, gasification, or anaerobic digestion to generate electricity or heat from municipal waste. While WTE plants provide a more direct and scalable method of reducing landfill dependency, they often face criticism for air pollution, CO₂ emissions, and challenges in separating recyclable materials. Waste-to-hydrogen attempts to address some of these concerns by producing a transportable energy carrier, but it requires additional processing and infrastructure, making it less proven compared to WTE in terms of economic viability and widespread implementation.

Paul Martin, a chemical engineer and designer of modular chemical processing plants, has long been skeptical of waste-to-energy and waste-to-hydrogen schemes. He argues that while these technologies are often marketed as a dual solution for waste management and energy production, they fail to deliver meaningful environmental benefits in most cases. Municipal solid waste (MSW), he points out, is a highly heterogeneous mix that includes valuable recyclable materials, wet organic waste that should be composted or digested, and a significant fraction of fossil-based plastics. The energy content in waste, particularly when converted to hydrogen, is overwhelmingly derived from plastics, making it effectively a fossil fuel disguised as a green solution.

Martin contends that waste-to-hydrogen is just another iteration of waste-to-energy. He emphasizes that plastics, if not mechanically recyclable, should be landfilled rather than burned or gasified, as landfilling offers a cheap and durable form of carbon sequestration. Instead of pursuing costly and inefficient waste-to-hydrogen schemes, he advocates for better public policy, source separation, improved mechanical recycling, and responsible landfill management.

The Pune plant aimed to use plasma gasification technology to thermally decompose both biomass and plastics in the waste stream to produce syngas, which is then processed to extract hydrogen. Plasma gasification is a high-temperature waste treatment process that converts “organic” materials into synthetic gas (syngas), a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Using a plasma torch, temperatures exceeding 3,000°C break down waste at the molecular level, reducing it to basic chemical components. Unlike traditional incineration, which burns waste in the presence of oxygen and generates pollutants, plasma gasification operates in a controlled, low-oxygen environment, producing fewer emissions and a vitrified slag that can be used in construction.

The technology is effective on both plastics and biomass because it does not rely on combustion but rather on extreme heat to decompose materials. Plastics, derived from fossil fuels, break down into hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and smaller hydrocarbon molecules, contributing significantly to the syngas output. Hydrocarbons extracted from underground are organic chemicals, just ones that were laid down millions of years ago. Biomass, such as food waste, paper, and wood, also decomposes into similar components but contains more oxygen and moisture.

The Pune waste-to-hydrogen facility was designed to process 350 tons of MSW per day, with plastics likely to make up 6% to 12% of the waste stream and biomass comprising 50% to 60%. Based on these estimates, the facility would handle between 21 and 42 tons of plastics and 175 to 210 tons of biomass daily. Given that plastics typically contain 14% hydrogen by mass and biomass around 6% hydrogen, the theoretical hydrogen potential of the waste stream would range between 16.2 and 18.5 tons per day, depending on the actual composition of the waste.

The facility, however, was only projected to produce 10 tons of hydrogen per day, suggesting an overall conversion efficiency of approximately 54% to 62%. The remaining hydrogen would likely be lost due to incomplete conversion, side reactions, or inefficiencies in syngas separation.

A plasma gasification-based waste-to-hydrogen facility like the one planned in Pune has multiple potential sources of greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide from waste-derived plastics, hydrogen leaks, methane from feedstock handling and the emissions from the energy required to operate it.

The plastic-derived fraction of the waste stream contributes directly to CO₂ emissions, as plastics are of fossil origin. If plastics make up 21 to 42 tons of daily waste, their gasification could generate 58 to 116 tons of CO₂ per day. There is no publicly available information indicating that the Pune plant had plans to implement carbon capture technologies.

Hydrogen, an indirect greenhouse gas, has a global warming potential (GWP) 12 to 37 times that of CO₂ over 100 and 20 years, respectively. Industrial hydrogen systems typically experience leak rates between 1% and 10%, meaning a facility producing 10 tons of hydrogen per day could lose 0.1 to 1 tons daily. This leakage alone could result in emissions equivalent to 1.2 to 12 tons of CO₂ per day on a 100-year GWP scale.

Methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂, could also be released if biodegradable waste decomposes before processing. Even a 0.5% anaerobic decomposition rate in feedstock handling could produce 2 to 5 tons of CO₂-equivalent methane emissions per day.

The waste-to-hydrogen facility would have required a substantial 525 to 700 MWh of electricity per day to sustain its plasma gasification process at 5,000°C (an assumption on my part for the napkin math). With Maharashtra’s grid carbon intensity at 653 kg CO₂e per MWh, this would have resulted in 343 to 457 metric tons of CO₂ emissions per day from electricity consumption alone.

In total, the facility’s daily emissions could range from 400 to 600 tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions. All to get ten tons of hydrogen. That’s 40 to 60 tons of CO2e per ton of hydrogen, vastly worse than turning natural gas into hydrogen and worse than electrolysis of water even at Pune’s high grid carbon intensity. There would have been absolutely nothing that was low carbon about this hydrogen.

With Maharashtra’s average industrial electricity rate at approximately $0.082 per kWh (₹6.85 per kWh) in 2025, the daily operational energy costs would range from $43,000 to $57,400 per day. Given ten tons a day, just the electricity operational costs would have have been $4.30 to $5.74 per kilogram of hydrogen produced.

A 350-ton-per-day municipal solid waste gasification facility would likely require 50 to 100 full-time employees, depending on the level of automation and operational complexity. Staffing would include 10 to 20 control room operators to monitor and optimize the gasification process, 15 to 25 engineers and technicians for maintenance of plasma torches, syngas separation, and hydrogen purification, and 10 to 20 workers for waste handling, sorting, and pre-processing. Additionally, 5 to 10 environmental and safety specialists would be needed to ensure emissions control and regulatory compliance, while 10 to 15 administrative and support staff would manage logistics, procurement, and security. Compared to conventional waste-to-energy incineration, plasma gasification requires more specialized personnel, increasing labor costs due to the need for highly trained engineers and process operators.

The estimated labor costs for the facility would range between $325,000 and $650,000 annually, depending on staffing levels. With engineers and technicians earning an average of $8,400 per year and administrative staff around $3,600 per year, the daily labor costs would range from $890 to $1,780. Compression and storage costs would be added as well. Over 10 tons of hydrogen, that’s likely in the range of another $0.50 in operational costs on top of the electricity.

Then there’s capex amortization. The amortized capital cost alone would add about $1.40 per kg of hydrogen over a 10-year plant life.

Total costs for the hydrogen would likely have been in the range of $6-$8 per kilogram, just to manufacture it. Distribution, of course, would cost even more.

Then of course there’s the question of what it would be used for. ​The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had planned to use the hydrogen produced from the facility locally to help the city lower its emissions, although the plant’s estimated emissions make it clear that wasn’t really true. The Mahatma Phule Renewable Energy & Infrastructure Technology (MAHAPREIT), a Maharashtra government undertaking, proposed to offtake the hydrogen generated at the facility and develop the necessary logistical infrastructure for its transportation to industries. In the project’s initial phase, MAHAPREIT suggested blending the produced hydrogen into the city’s gas distribution network in collaboration with Maharashtra Natural Gas Ltd, a joint venture of GAIL (India) Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL).

There are so many problems with that of course. ​Pune’s city gas distribution network, operated by Maharashtra Natural Gas Limited (MNGL), currently supplies natural gas for domestic, commercial, and industrial use. Blending hydrogen into natural gas distribution networks offers limited benefits due to hydrogen’s low energy density and infrastructure constraints. Even at 20% hydrogen by volume, the energy content of the blended gas increases by only 6–7%, meaning minimal reductions in fossil fuel consumption. Additionally, higher hydrogen concentrations pose challenges, including pipeline embrittlement, increased leakage rates, and modifications required for end-user appliances.

As for piping it to industries, the total projected volumes are so low it’s hard to imagine what industries might consider this suitable. Scaled ammonia and methanol plants require 500 to 1,900 tons of hydrogen daily, so 10 tons doesn’t begin to fullfil the requirement.

​The initial phase of Pune’s project focused on constructing a pilot plant at the Ramtekdi industrial area. This facility is designed to process 10 tons of municipal solid waste daily to produce approximately 0.6 tons of green hydrogen per day. The generated hydrogen was intended for local applications, such as fueling Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) buses. As of January 2025, PMPML operates approximately 1,700 buses daily, with 490 being electric buses. The agency plans to expand its fleet by adding 1,600 new buses, including 1,000 electric buses, but is also considering hydrogen buses, although it doesn’t have any at present.

It doesn’t really matter. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had committed $11 million to kickstart the 10-ton-per-day pilot facility, but later deemed the upfront investment impractical. Additionally, the project sought $30 million under India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission, but no funding materialized. The project is, thankfully, dead in the water.

The entire Pune facility was a bad idea from the beginning, producing massive emissions at high costs for no benefit. This napkin math case study confirms Paul Martin’s perspective on waste-to-hydrogen plays, unsurprisingly.