Compressed biogas in India's energy transition

India’s successful energy transition hinges on the ability to diversify the energy mix.

- Sanjay Kumar Kar

More importantly progressive energy transition depends on indigenous economically viable clean energy solutions available to large sections of users. Often, the promising and emerging domestic clean energy solutions struggle to make meaningful impact due to other competing clean energy options. Some of the extremely promising clean energy solutions get policy backing but fail to convert intentions into groundbreaking actions. Occasionally such options remain at the epicentre of media coverage and policy briefing. For instance, the National Biofuel Policy highlighted the increasing role of compressed biogas (CBG) to strengthen indigenous bioenergy generation, distribution, and consumption. Considering the critical role of CBG in reducing India’s energy import dependency, especially imported LNG, the government launched Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT). As per SATAT website, SATAT scheme received 2227 active letters of intent. Under SATAT, 94 CBG plants sold 31422 tons of CBG in 2024-25, with an average commercial output of 334.26 tons per annum per plant, which means a