Plasma Gasification Promises the World, Fails Everywhere—Pune Was No Exception – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 2nd March 2025, 01:33 am

The idea was seductive: turn Pune’s mountains of garbage into clean hydrogen fuel. The city’s waste problem would be solved, and India would get a head start in the global hydrogen economy. That was the pitch when Pune Municipal Corporation and The Green Billions Limited announced India’s first waste-to-hydrogen project under the EU-India Clean Energy and Climate Partnership. The ₹450 crore (~$54 million) project aimed to process 350 tons of municipal solid waste per day, using plasma gasification to produce 10 tons of hydrogen daily. It was marketed as a breakthrough, promising to reduce landfill waste, cut emissions, and create a clean hydrogen supply for city buses and gas grid blending.

Yet, before a single kilogram of hydrogen was produced, the project collapsed. The Pune Municipal Corporation withdrew its ₹90 crore (~$11 million) funding, and India’s National Green Hydrogen Mission refused to provide the requested $30 million subsidy. My economic and emissions analysis suggests that hydrogen production would cost between $6 and $8 per kilogram, far above market rates. Worse, the estimated lifecycle emissions modeling showed that the hydrogen would have a carbon footprint of 40 to 60 tons of CO₂ per ton of H₂ produced, higher than steam methane reforming from natural gas or electrolysis at Pune’s high grid carbon intensity. The dream of clean hydrogen from garbage evaporated before the first plasma torch was lit.

Pune’s failure is not an isolated incident. Plasma gasification and waste-to-hydrogen projects have failed worldwide, often after consuming vast amounts of public and private capital. The technical hurdles, energy inefficiencies, and high costs have made full-scale deployment elusive. The Pune fiasco fits into a broader trend—cities and investors being sold a technological silver bullet that turns out to be anything but.

The cautionary tales are numerous. The Tees Valley plasma gasification project in the UK, backed by industrial gas giant Air Products, was supposed to be the largest and most advanced waste-to-energy facility in the world. Built at a staggering cost of $1 billion, it promised to gasify 1,000 tons of waste per day, producing syngas for power generation. Yet, despite world-class engineering resources, the plant was never able to operate reliably. Persistent technical issues with feedstock variability, tar formation, and gas cleanup led Air Products to abandon the project entirely in 2016, scrapping the plant at a massive financial loss. If a billion-dollar facility in the UK couldn’t make plasma gasification work, how was Pune’s $54 million project supposed to succeed?

Then there’s Plasco Energy in Canada, which ran a 100-ton-per-day plasma gasification pilot in Ottawa for years. It, too, promised clean energy from waste. But repeated downtime, high maintenance costs, and emissions problems derailed the project. When Plasco attempted to scale up to a commercial 300-ton-per-day facility, it failed to secure financing and went bankrupt in 2015. Despite years of real-world testing, the process was too unreliable and too expensive. Pune’s planners seemed unaware or uninterested in these lessons.

A handful of waste-to-hydrogen projects are still being pursued, but they all depend on massive government support and haven’t yet proven themselves at scale. In Lancaster, California, SGH2 Energy is building what it calls the world’s largest waste-to-hydrogen plant. Using a plasma-enhanced process, it aims to convert 42,000 tons of sorted waste per year into 12 tons of hydrogen per day. But it still hasn’t entered full operation, and its viability remains uncertain. The project is being propped up by California’s generous hydrogen incentives—without them, it likely wouldn’t be financially feasible.

The UK’s PowerHouse Energy is another case study in unproven optimism. The company has spent years developing small modular plastic-to-hydrogen plants, with planned deployments in Poland and the UK. But despite the hype, these projects remain in the pilot stage. If even 25-ton-per-day waste-to-hydrogen systems can’t reach commercial scale, Pune’s 350-ton-per-day facility was wildly overambitious.

Japan offers a rare case where gasification-based waste-to-energy has been successfully deployed, but even here, the projects don’t focus on hydrogen production. Facilities like the Kawaguchi Asahi Clean Center process hundreds of tons of waste daily, but they use the syngas for power generation, not hydrogen extraction. And crucially, Japan’s waste gasification projects only work because of aggressive government funding, strict waste sorting policies, and a national commitment to reducing landfill use. Pune had none of these conditions in place.

The same reasons that sank Tees Valley, Plasco, and other waste-to-hydrogen projects applied to Pune. Plasma gasification is energy-intensive and costly. Pune’s plant required 525 to 700 megawatt-hours per day, driving hydrogen production costs above $6 per kilogram, making it non-competitive with grey hydrogen from fossil fuels, never mind direct electrification. Feedstock inconsistency makes operations unreliable. Municipal solid waste is a heterogeneous mix of wet organic matter, plastics, paper, and metals. Plasma gasification struggles with variable fuel quality, causing operational inefficiencies.

Environmental claims were misleading. Much of the hydrogen would have come from fossil-based plastics, meaning the project was effectively a disguised fossil hydrogen plant with worse emissions than steam methane reforming. There was no viable business case. No industry was willing to buy Pune’s waste-derived hydrogen at the required price, and hydrogen for buses or gas blending was impractical.

Instead of gambling on high-tech waste alchemy, cities should invest in waste prevention strategies. Policies that reduce single-use plastics, improve product design for durability, and encourage responsible consumption can minimize waste at the source. Less waste generated means less waste to manage in costly facilities.

Recycling remains one of the most effective ways to reduce landfill waste. Separating plastics, metals, glass, and paper at the point of disposal ensures that valuable materials are recovered rather than burned or buried. While recycling has its challenges, it is far more energy-efficient than plasma gasification and does not rely on expensive, unproven technology.

Composting and anaerobic digestion offer low-cost, scalable solutions for organic waste. Food scraps and biodegradable materials can be turned into nutrient-rich compost or biogas, reducing landfill methane emissions and providing useful products. Unlike plasma gasification, these methods require minimal energy input and are already widely deployed.

Landfilling, while often criticized, can still be a practical and low-emission solution when managed properly. Modern landfills with methane capture systems can generate energy while preventing greenhouse gas leaks. For non-recyclable plastics, landfilling may actually be a better form of carbon sequestration than gasifying them into CO₂ and hydrogen.

Hydrogen, where it is truly needed, should come from renewable electrolysis powered by cheap wind and solar, not from inefficient, high-carbon waste conversion schemes. Pune’s planners wisely pulled the plug before more money was wasted—but the fact that such an unrealistic project got this far should make every government rethink waste-to-hydrogen hype.

The global experience is clear: waste-to-hydrogen is a failed experiment. It’s time to move on.