Abstract Concerns over energy supply security, climate change as well as local air pollution and the increasing prices of energy services are having a growing impact on policy making throughout the world. Today’s energy and transport system, which is based mainly on fossil energy carriers, can in no way be evaluated as sustainable. Increasingly, hydrogen is being promoted as an alternative energy carrier for a sustainable future. For biological H2 systems to become commercially competitive, they must be able to synthesize H2 at rates that are sufficient for practical application. Thermochemical platform provides various efficient methods for conversion of residual biomass (agriculture, forest, and algal) into hydrogen in a single or two stage processes. The processes (gasification, pyrolysis, hydrothermal) and materials/catalysts employed for these processes can be modified to improve the efficiencies for stationary applications/transportation fuel. Integration of various technologies would help in the realisation of hydrogen economy in the future.