With the introduction of compressed biogas (CBG) as one of the future fuels and renewable sources of energy, India has been trying to address the replacement of fossil fuels usage in various applications and ultimately moving towards utilisation of modern bioenergy.
CBG production in the country is through different feedstocks. It can solve the issue of management of agricultural waste to reduce potential open burning, utilise the huge quantity of animal waste which gets generated on account of India being an agrarian economy where there is significant cattle population.
Apart from these primary sources of CBG production in India, an ever increasing municipal solid waste, press mud generated in production of sugar and domestic sewage sludge can also be used as feedstock.
Despite its many advantages, adoption of CBG plants has been sluggish with only 115 CBG plants functional as of December 30, 2024, far away from the target of 5,000 plants by 2030, which was set by the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) in 2018.
As Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) tried to compile the data on the operational CBG plant with the objective of understanding the current CBG production scenario in the country, it was observed that nowhere in the public domain the production data of the operational CBG plant is available.
For all the information regarding CBG plants, the only official source is GOBARdhan portal which falls under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti.
Information blackout
As we went through the portal, there are options for the entrepreneurs to register their CBG/Bio CNG or biogas plants and there is a link to locate the registered plants as well. There is also a link wherein you can view the registration certificate of each registered entity and there are some benefits enumerated for the entrepreneurs from ministries and concerned departments.
Details of the registered Biogas/ CBG/ Bio CNG plants are available on the portal which includes name of the plant, name of the entity, type of the plant, status of the plant, gas production capacity, feedstock capacity, bioslurry production capacity, fermented organic manure production capacity, liquid fermented organic manure LFOM Production Capacity.
It is to be highlighted here the status of the plant can either be functional/completed/under construction or yet to start construction. But for the functional plants, what is their operational efficiency, current production of CBG and no actual operating data was available, which ensures that the plant is indeed in operation. It is only the capacities of gas production, feedstock, bioslurry, FOM or LFOM which are mentioned, these are more of rated details of the plant.
There is no data available on how much CBG is produced by each operational plant per day or per month. More importantly, the portal doesn’t mention anything about the feedstock of specific plants, which could have been a useful information to understand which feedstock is majorly used in CBG plants and what is the quantum of different types of feedstock required by CBG plants at present.
This information would have been useful in understanding the challenges related to specific feeds and can be addressed to upscale the utilisation of different available feedstocks.
Regarding the bioslurry, FOM or LFOM there is no data available on the quantity of each waste or by-product generated per day from the plant, how it is managed by the plant and where it is getting utilised or disposed off. The portal should at least present the overall percentage share of utilisation and disposal of FOM and LFOM along with other operational parameters.
It is recommended that the portal should have a separate section for all operational plants with more structured and updated information included; this will enable the policymakers to understand the problems and challenges faced by the entrepreneurs.
| Details of the operational CBG plants which should be part of GOBARdhan portal | |
| Name of the plant | |
| Address of the plant | |
| Production capacity (TPD) | |
| Feedstock usage (TPD) | |
| Average Operational Data (based on past 30 days) | |
| Daily feedstock consumption (TPD) | |
| Daily average Gas production (TPD) | |
| Water usage (KLPD) | |
| Current Efficiency of the plant (%)� | |
| Daily average Bio slurry generation (TPD) | |
| FOM generation (TPD) | |
| LFOM generation (KLPD) | |
| Disposal practices (stored/sold) | |
| Quality of biogas (quarterly/monthly reports) | |
GOBARdhan portal can be used as a tool to assess the performance of CBG plants in the country, simultaneously highlighting the bottlenecks by inclusivity of operational parameters for all the plants running at present.
This portal can be used more efficiently by MNRE to upscale the CBG production in the country. At present pace, it is very unlikely that India will achieve its target of 5000 CBG plants by 2030. But the government should show intention to develop the sector by being more transparent with updated data and analysing the challenges and issues of the sector by using the portal as a datacentre for all CBG units operational or to be operational.
Nivit Kumar Yadav, Programme Director, Industrial Pollution Unit, CSE mentioned, “It is very difficult to understand why Jal shakti has been given the responsibility of GOBARdhan portal, MNRE and MoPNG should have shown leadership in ensuring that quality and meaningful data should come in public domain for analysis of the operational status of CBG plants in the country”.
“The sector is growing fast and it is imperative that there should be transparency of information so that the issues and challenges faced by the producers can be highlighted and corrective measures in the form of policy level interventions can be taken,” he added.