The demand is legislated. The supply is not built.
This is an unusual infrastructure sector: the offtake obligation exists in law and rises on a schedule, the price is notified, and the constraint is entirely on the build side. That inverts the normal risk question. It is not whether anyone will buy the gas — it is whether the plant will run at rated output on real feedstock, for years.
Demand created by obligation, not by preference.
Most renewable sectors have to win their demand — on price, on sentiment, on procurement policy that can be reversed. Compressed bio-gas in India does not. A blending obligation on gas distributors is in force and steps up over time, which means the buyer is required to buy and the volume required rises whether or not anyone is enthusiastic about it.
The instruments a project can stand on.
| Instrument | What it does | Relevance to a project |
|---|---|---|
| SATAT | Oil marketing companies contract to buy Compressed Bio-Gas from independent producers at a notified price and dispense it through their retail networks. | The offtake route for the gas |
| CBG blending obligation | A mandated and rising share of CBG in the gas distributors' supply, placing a legal floor under sector demand. | The demand floor |
| GOBARdhan | National scheme supporting conversion of organic waste and cattle dung into biogas and fertiliser, with implementation through states and urban local bodies. | Municipal and rural projects |
| MNRE support | Central financial assistance frameworks for biogas and waste-to-energy capacity, administered through the renewable energy ministry. | Capital cost, project dependent |
| Fertiliser Control Order | Sets the standards organic fertiliser must meet to be sold, including nutrient content and contamination limits. | The fertiliser revenue line |
Which instruments a given project can actually draw on depends on the state, the ownership structure and the feedstock. We map that project by project in the DPR rather than presenting a maximal list as though every line applied.
Why the plants have not been built.
Capacity commissioned to date trails the obligation, and the shortfall is not a financing shortfall. Capital has been available. The failures have been operational, and they repeat with enough regularity to be listed.
Projects are sized on a district-level residue estimate from a report, then discover at commissioning that the material is not collectable at that price, at that moisture, on that schedule.
A plant optimised around a single input has no answer when that input is seasonal, contested or simply worse than the table value said it would be.
Hydrogen sulphide destroys equipment that was not built to handle it, and gas that misses specification cannot be sold at all. Retrofitting a scrubber costs more than building it right.
Output degrades quietly over the first two years because nobody owns the number. The plant exists, the obligation exists, and the gas does not arrive.
We built the research plant before we sold the parks.
A 10 TPD multifeed plant, built to be studied rather than to hit a payback date, with every batch characterised and tested so the recipes carry into commercial scale. Two independent institutions evaluated the design and the project report before ground was broken. That sequence — prove, then scale — is the whole argument, and it is the opposite of how most of this sector has gone about it.
The models differ by where the risk sits.
Municipal concession with a tipping fee attached to the feedstock — three revenue lines instead of two.
Mill-attached plant on proven press mud, with the fertiliser sold back to the mill's own growers.
Independent plant on catchment residue and dedicated energy crop, sited for the feedstock rather than an anchor.
What we are looking for, plainly.
Investors underwriting park-scale capacity, who want the feedstock evidence before the financial model rather than after it.
Lenders and development institutions financing individual plants against contracted offtake and evaluated project reports.
Mills, distilleries and municipalities bringing a waste stream and a site, seeking a build-own-operate or joint venture structure.
Institutions and technology partners working on feedstock, microbiology and purification at commercial scale.
Send a note saying which of these you are and what you would want to see first. We will send the corresponding material rather than a generic deck.
Talk to us