Excerpted from the Mittal Institute website
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute is pleased to announce its first recipients of the Faculty Climate Research Grants. These grants are designed to foster deeper scholarly engagement on climate change, catalyze the creation of new knowledge, and contribute to the development of sustainable solutions across South Asia. Projects focused on three main research categories: energy transition and energy policy; food systems, agriculture, and land use; and law and policy for climate transition and adaptation. Read more about the eight winning projects, which includes a Harvard-China Project grant for "Optimizing India’s Biofuel Capacity with Green Hydrogen Penetration: A Decarbonization and Emission Reduction Strategy." View full article here
Optimizing India’s Biofuel Capacity with Green Hydrogen Penetration: A Decarbonization and Emission Reduction Strategy
Principal Investigator: Michael B. McElroy, Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Chair, Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment
Lead Investigator: Haiyang Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard-China Project
India is grappling with a multifaceted air pollution crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels and seasonal agricultural wastes. This crisis not only degrades the physical environment but also severely impacts public health. Leveraging biomass for biofuel production presents a viable solution to mitigate pollution, enhance public health, and promote sustainable development. Additionally, the potential of integrating “green” hydrogen (i.e., that produced by water electrolysis using renewable power) into the biomass-to-biofuel process has not yet been sufficiently investigated. Given that India has access to some of the cheapest renewable power globally, the addition of green hydrogen could significantly reduce the production cost and enhance the biofuel production volume, thereby enabling India to decarbonize a larger share of its economy.
This project will conduct a state-level analysis across various regions in India to assess the potential of various types of crop residues, animal wastes, and municipal and industrial wastes for biofuel production. The analysis will differentiate between readily available biomass, such as rice husk and bagasse, and transportable biomass, which requires additional collection and transportation infrastructure. Various biomass conversion technologies, including gasification and pyrolysis coupled with Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, methanol synthesis, and hydrotreatment, will be evaluated to identify the most efficient and cost-effective solutions for biofuel production, with a particular focus on liquid fuels critical for decarbonizing “hard-to-abate” transportation modes (e.g., heavy-duty trucking and aviation). Additionally, the integration of green hydrogen into these processes will be explored, leveraging renewable energy resources, notably solar and wind. Using high-resolution meteorological data, the hourly production of green hydrogen will be simulated to assess its cost-effectiveness and potential to enhance biofuel production. The environmental benefits of reducing fossil fuel reliance and burning of agricultural residues will be evaluated, including the projected impacts on carbon emissions and air quality. In collaboration with colleagues in India who are working on local-scale agricultural waste gasification projects, this research will help empower local farmers by providing sustainable solutions to manage agricultural waste. By turning waste into valuable energy resources, these projects will contribute to rural development, offering farmers new income streams while reducing air pollution. This partnership will provide key insights for policymakers, support the development of sustainable energy frameworks, and create new opportunities in the biofuel and renewable energy sectors, contributing to poverty alleviation and economic development in India.