Biomass power has been spoken about for decades now, with the government looking to promote it since the 1990s.

The Ministry for New and Renewable Energy launched the Biomass-based Co-generation Programme in May 2018 with the main objective of optimising the use of the country’s biomass resources through co-generation technology in sugar mills and other industries such as rice, paper mills, etc.

Subsequently, the programme, which focused on co-generation initially, now supports the manufacturing of pellets and briquettes also. Thermal power plants have been mandated to use biomass pellets for co-firing in these thermal power plants.

Thus, the National Bioenergy Programme (NBP) supports the implementation of the National Mission on use of Biomass in Thermal Power Plants. This will enable a reduction in the practice of stubble burning, particularly in the northern States.

New guidelines

Under the new guidelines of the programme for the period 2021-22 to 2025-26, Central financial assistance will be made available for setting up of pellets and briquettes and non-bagasse based power generation projects. Apart from these, the NBP also supports compressed biogas and biogas plants.

Despite all this, biomass power and bagasse co-generation are the least spoken about vis-a-vis other green energy sources like solar, wind, hydro and now green hydrogen. Why is it so?

Agreed, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison — solar versus biomass or wind versus biomass. But biomass indeed is a category which works best in a decentralised market on a smaller and medium scale.

According to those in the Ministry, the biomass category has started picking up again in the last two or three years after a lull.

In fact, States are coming forward to use the Budgetary allocation made to promote the segment under NBP. Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Haryana are the frontrunners in these projects.

Now States like West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkand are also coming forward.

According to Gaurav Kedia, Chairman, Indian Biogas Association, “Green hydrogen will take many years before we can really talk about something like $1 or $2 per kg of hydrogen. It is a thing of the future. But when I think about solar versus biomass, biomass is also like solar because it is like a battery. And if we consider ourselves as a part of nature, not apart from it, then only biomass can become a big success. The government can come out with a lot of policies, which they are doing anyway. But what biomass really needs is a movement. An awareness drive where we all need to play our role — household or commercial.”

A challenge is the supply chain part for this category. In the case of solar and wind, the feedstock is free. But that is not the case with biomass.

“We really need to look at biomass in a manner that it is a battery for energy resource,” says Kedia.

According to industry players, technically, a lot of advancements have already been made but they are not happening at a centralised level in a decentralised manner.

Another aspect is that biomass is a project, and it cannot be treated as a product. “In solar, we can talk about product, it’s almost a standard product, and you can just take it and put it somewhere. Of course, you need to do some ground survey, but it’s more or less a product. But for biomass it varies from place to place and the requirements also are different,” Kedia added.

When talking of energy transition, it is often about green hydrogen, which is yet to be proven at a larger scale, and not about biomass or biogas, which is already there and has been proven. If you have biomass you can convert it into biogas.

“What is lacking for sure is a proper awareness campaign about all the nuances pertaining to the sector,” Kedia added.

Little awareness

Like the mass awareness campaign happening for green hydrogen and other categories of renewable energy, biomass also needs a push.

For example, in India’s energy basket, the government wants 15 per cent contribution to come from natural gas, and 5 per cent as a compulsory blending (biogas) obligation by 2028-29. It also wants 15 million tonnes being produced from biomass equivalent to CNG.

“India is importing around 23-24 million tonnes of LNG. If you talk about 15 million tonnes of potential that can be harnessed based on biomass, then the future looks very bright. Besides, in biogas plants, fertilizer also comes into the picture. And there is big demand coming for organic food. And to get the organic food, you need to have organic fertilizer,” Kedia said.

So there is a potential for at least 7-8 per cent contribution in the whole energy mix from biomass, Kedia said.

Says Atul Mittal, South Asia Director for Business Development, Sistema.bio: “A combination for different customers with different energy resource requirement will make us energy independent in the the future. Let us not try to centralise energy sourcing from heavy projects. A proper mix where you classify the customer of energy and also the energy source, then there will be multiple participants involved.”

Awareness, trust, a mindset change to new technologies — all these are important for promoting this category. For biomass energy, a decentralised market is what works best and given the huge rural and semi-urban market, India can definitely work on it with the required focus by the government as well as stakeholders.