Biomass as a product of photosynthesis is a renewable resource that can be used for sustainable production of hydrogen. However, direct production of hydrogen from biomass by gasification/water-gas shift technology is unfavorable economically, except for very low cost feedstocks and very large plants. Our approach proposes an alternative strategy with potentially better economics resulting from the combined production of hydrogen with valuable coproducts. The concept is based on a two-stage process: fast pyrolysis of biomass to generate biooil and catalytic steam reforming of the oil or its fractions to produce hydrogen. Fast pyrolysis, a technology near commercial scale, could be carried out in a regional network of plants that would supply bio-oil to a central reforming facility. The preferred option is to separate bio-oil into a lignin-derived fraction, which could be used for producing phenolic resins or fuel additives and a carbohydrate-derived material that would be steam reformed to produce hydrogen. The key problem for this concept is to demonstrate that bio-oil can be efficiently steam reformed. The co-product strategy can be also applied to residual fractions derived from pulping operations and from ethanol production. Hydrogen can be generated from these fractions that are currently available in most pulp mills and that will become available in future ethanol plants using lignocellulosics as feedstocks.