Biomass as a fuel is not new. But it hasn’t scaled.
Its scale is constrained by structures that capital can’t underwrite at scale.
The industrial fuel market is already massive. India alone consumes ~1.3 billion tonnes of coal annually. ~500 million tonnes of this is realistically substitutable through biomass pellets and RDF. That’s a $50–60B industrial heat and fuel market embedded inside existing plants. Similar substitution opportunities exist globally.
The reality: ~90%+ of industrial boilers still operate on coal because, beyond a few retrofits, substituting coal with biomass and RDF has proven difficult to execute at scale.
The symptomatic issue is a mismatch between fuel (e.g. biomass pellets) characteristics and boiler combustion system design.
The root cause is the lack of financing for boiler retrofits, fuel preparation systems, and emissions compliance required to absorb inconsistent and low-quality biomass and RDF at scale.
What we see repeatedly at Encito Advisors is capital deployment getting blocked for the same reasons:
This is why institutional capital increasingly avoids solo project SPVs and underwrites repeatable multi-asset platforms — standardized plant design, secured and hedged feedstock contracts, and structures that can support multi-site replication.
Biomass doesn’t break at concept.
It breaks at financing, execution, and replication.
Scale in biomass-based fuel utilization comes when capital is structured to stay through design, retrofit integration, construction, commissioning, and early operations— across multiple sites, not just the first one.
Encito Advisors LLP
Suite 01A118, Raheja Platinum,
Sag Baug Rd., Marol, Andheri (E),
Mumbai 400059, India
+91 99877 13480
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