Key insights and takeaways: WBA India Congress 2025

Cities Driving the CBG Revolution

• Sustainable urban biogas ecosystems require robust PPP and private-private partnerships, traceable value chains, advanced segregation infrastructure, and incentives for waste segregation and processing.
• Technologies from other countries cannot be directly replicated due to India's unique waste characteristics- differences in moisture content, calorific value, and segregation efficiency.
• Strong government intervention is essential-particularly to ensure ease of doing business and reduce operational costs for market-led biogas enterprises.

Carbon Markets – Innovation & Integration

• India's carbon markets must evolve to support integrated trading platforms where multiple gases can be priced together-enabled through frameworks such as Radiative Forcing Accounting (RFA). The discussion also linked opportunities in green ammonia, marine decarbonisation, and national-level coordination.
• India's negotiating position in global carbon markets may weaken if the country cannot expand its portfolio of low-carbon export goods. Industries may hesitate to procure biogas without assured carbon credit benefits-making strong credit mechanisms indispensable.
• Biogas initiatives must be aligned with PM-PRANAM, leveraging the dual benefits of meeting energy demand and reducing chemical fertiliser dependency through organic inputs-supporting soil restoration and carbon regulatory compliance.
• The upcoming National Green Aviation Mission (SAF) presents a major opportunity for integrating biomethane and advanced biofuels into the aviation fuel mix.

Strategic Vision for Biogas & Biomethane - Margin to Mainstream

• India targets 5% CBG injection into city gas networks by 2027-28, modelled on the ethanol success framework. MNRE will support plant setup, while GAIL/CGD networks ensure offtake. Investors seek clarity on feedstock security, bid discounting norms, and interest subvention.
• A national feedstock survey, which shows over 220 million tonnes of agricultural residues (likely an underestimate), is being expanded into geographic cluster maps. FPOs and cooperatives will anchor long-term aggregation, with one-year inventory norms to enhance plant viability.
• Current subsidy schemes (MBOD+ gas producer subsidies) create perverse incentives, blocking entrepreneurial aggregation. A revised framework must ensure equal eligibility for all entities delivering feedstock or collection services.
• India reports 40,000 tons of biomethane from 140 MOPNG plants, against a target of 17 million tonnes, with no production data from bag digesters. A single source of truth for national biogas/CBG data will be established for 5-10 year planning.
• Agriculture, Cooperation, and Panchayats ministries will collaborate on feedstock chains and milk cooperative-linked distribution. An indigenous manufacturing ecosystem (standards + approved lists) will reduce equipment costs, following the solar-sector template.

Biogas beyond Borders: Global Dialogue

• India can produce 100 billion cubic metres of biogas annually, but scaling is hampered by fragmented feedstock supply chains, weak segregation, and a lack of farmer-industry linkage, requiring entrepreneurs and startups to build the collection ecosystem that ethanol never had to solve.
• Indian CBG prices (1,485/mmBtu) are far below global levels, banks demand 50% equity, and long-term offtake contracts-critical for ethanol scale-up are largely absent, leaving small developers unbankable.
• Three major revenue streams remain uncaptured: bio-digestate, CO2, and carbon credits; 90 MMT of slurry from future plants lacks processing, storage, and state-certified bio-fertiliser markets despite proven 20% yield gains and large fertiliser subsidy-saving potential.
• Policy progress is significant (MNRE budget up ~450%, 24 reforms), yet key gaps persist: inter-ministry coordination, payment security for municipal offtake, and financing solutions for 40M potential household biogas systems (current 2030 target too conservative).
• Next steps include soil health trials, World Bank credit-enhancement pilots, harmonised certifications, and exploring a revolving fund using 31.2 lakh crore LPG subsidy savings to finance household clusters with centralised slurry processing.
• Global best practices highlight systems thinking-centralised collection, storage technologies, cooperative models-and India must adapt these to its smallholder context to unlock biogas as a mainstream clean-energy and rural development engine.