Marcella Franchi on What It Takes to Build Biofuel Projects in India

Published on September 14, 2026, by Anindita Mukhopadhyay on The Biofuels Insider

Haffner Energy’s Chief Commercial Officer explains what India offers European clean-fuel technology providers and why the energy transition will be driven by ecosystems, not by individual companies working in isolation.

Marcella Franchi speaks like someone structuring a good deal. Each word earns its place. Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Sustainable Aviation Fuel at Haffner Energy, Franchi began her career as a financial engineer in London. She joined Haffner as Chief Marketing Officer in 2021 and in just five years steered the company’s international positioning and investor communications through its successful IPO, established its US subsidiary, and led its expansion in North America.

Haffner Energy develops a proprietary biomass-to-renewable-gas technology enabling the production of SAF, hydrogen, methanol and other renewable energy products. The company considers India a promising market for the next phase of biofuels development.

“One of the strengths of our technology is its ability to process a broad range of residual biomass feedstocks, subject to analysis and appropriate preparation. This is particularly interesting for a country such as India, which has such varied biomass—not just forest residues. India is not a market for simple technology transfer. We see it as a long-term strategic innovation partner. Europe brings decades of engineering expertise, technology development and industrial know-how. India can bring scale, agility, abundant and diverse biomass resources, and growing manufacturing capability. Together, we can develop solutions that neither side could achieve alone.”

Haffner already has a substantial proof point in India.

“A €15 billion memorandum of understanding was signed earlier this year between the government of Maharashtra, JW Group, and a consortium of investors that selected Haffner Energy as the technology provider. The goal is to build an AI-focused campus and data centre, and a green hydrogen production plant. It shows that when governments, local developers and technology providers align, new realms of possibility open up.”

I ask what European technology providers must get right before alignment can become scale. Franchi’s optimism is disciplined by experience:

“The barriers to deployment go beyond technology. The biggest challenges we see today are financing, regulation, permitting and creating bankable projects.”

From Hydrogen to a Multi-Fuel Platform

Haffner Energy’s recent history provides an answer to how the company approaches such challenges. Franchi is strikingly candid:

“Moving from demonstration to commercial deployment is obviously difficult and the barriers are not all technological. At the time of our IPO, renewable hydrogen was central to our development. The European market subsequently developed more slowly than anticipated, particularly in relation to offtake, so we broadened the applications of our technology to include SAF, methanol and other renewable fuels.”

Haffner Energy turned that into a successful product strategy.

“We innovated around our technology to accommodate a changing macroeconomic environment. That was when we expanded it to produce SAF, methanol and other biofuels. It was a major shift for the company. It goes well beyond technology development. Sometimes, you simply have to go with the market.”

Their capacity to adapt was tested again as subsidy regimes shifted. Haffner Energy chose the more difficult and ultimately more durable route:

“We have continued to reduce capital costs and improve competitiveness, with the objective of developing projects whose economics are robust and not wholly dependent on subsidies. That is a very difficult way to advance when you are innovating because you have to do almost everything yourself.”

This stoked a collaborative commercial ambition.

“Our objective today is no longer simply to prove the technology. Our priority is to complete the qualification of the latest generation and then replicate modular plants efficiently. We are pursuing a modular approach that is easier to replicate and can accommodate both small and large plants.”

What Gives India an Edge

Franchi sees India as a market where the next phase of biofuels could move faster. She draws a distinction between regulation that creates demand and regulation that prescribes the technology used to meet it.

“Europe has a market because it has a lot of restrictive mandates—in terms of what it considers to be truly decarbonised fuels. It is one thing to tell companies to use biofuels, quite another to tell them how to do it.”

Mandates give producers a market. In her view, the accompanying rules can also exclude emerging pathways before they have had time to become commercially established.

“That makes it very difficult for nascent technologies and nascent markets to establish themselves. There are a lot of potentially interesting projects that are unable to progress because of restrictive regulation. That is one of the reasons why we actually see India as a very interesting market: it may offer greater scope to consider different technological pathways while still meeting its decarbonisation objectives.”

India’s scale creates another question: how to turn biomass spread across millions of smallholders and fragmented supply chains into a dependable industrial input.

For Franchi, the answer lies in combining Haffner’s technology with local intelligence:

“At Haffner Energy, we bring the technology and the expertise to convert residual biomass into renewable energy. For feedstock sourcing and aggregation, we rely on strong local partners who understand the resources, supply chains and local realities far better than we ever could. We believe this combination of our technology with local expertise is essential to developing robust and scalable projects—particularly in a market as large and diverse as India. We truly see the potential local benefit of using our technology in India.”

Franchi’s case for India goes beyond its biomass:

“India has a strong manufacturing base and competitive labour costs compared with Europe. There are opportunities to manufacture equipment more cost-effectively while maintaining high-quality standards. That combination of local manufacturing and proven European technology can accelerate deployment not only in India but internationally. Over time, India could potentially become a manufacturing base supporting deployments elsewhere in Asia, provided the right industrial partnerships and quality standards are in place.”

The same advantage extends to operating expenditure. Feedstock is often a major component of a plant’s OPEX. In India, it can be both cheaper and more diverse.

“India also offers tremendous opportunities because of the diversity of its biomass resources, including rice husks, forest residues and other organic residues. Once a project and feedstock have been screened, samples can be analysed at our production centre in France to estimate their behaviour and expected outputs.”

The case for India is not only commercial, as Franchi notes astutely:

“When you start talking about producing fuels locally, you strengthen the sovereignty of your fuel supply. That is an incredibly important message across the world. It is, of course, not just about sovereignty but also about decarbonisation. Creating value from appropriate forestry residues can support better forest management, although it is only one element of a much broader approach to wildfire prevention.”

The Ideal Indian Partner

The scale of the opportunity makes the choice of partner all the more consequential for Franchi and her team.

“For us, confidence comes from long-term partnerships with the right energy company, not simply from equipment sales. Depending on the project, we may work with strong local partners through structures that align the interests of the developer, investors and technology provider. We would bring world-class technology, while the partner would contribute its knowledge of the local business environment and its ability to identify the right projects. The appropriate model would be assessed case by case.”

She points to Haffner’s successful partnership with Mundi Énergies in Canada as a model.

“We see our host countries as always having a benefit locally from what we do. So similar partnership models could work extremely well between Europe and India. Energy transition for me will be driven by ecosystems, not by individual companies working in isolation.”

Franchi closes with characteristic candour and what may sound, to the right reader, like an invitation:

“We are still a small company with big ambitions, so we have to focus our resources carefully. India has tremendous potential, but it is a vast and complex market, and success will depend on finding the right local partner. With the right partnerships, India could help build the next generation of renewable fuels—not only for India, but for Asia and beyond.”

In part two of our conversation, Marcella Franchi goes deeper into integrated biorefineries, modular thermolysis, and what it takes to adapt technology to the market.