The GOBARdhan Initiative for Circular Bioenergy

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The Union Cabinet recently cleared the GOBARdhan scheme with a huge budget of ₹23,731 crore to promote circular bioenergy.

This national framework brings the entire Compressed Biogas (CBG) sector together. It turns farm waste, cow dung, and city waste into clean fuel and high-quality organic fertilizers.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) will manage this initiative across the country.
The government will run this scheme over a 10-year period starting from FY 2026-27 to FY 2035-36.
It merges older programs like SATAT, Market Development Assistance (MDA), Biomass Aggregation Machinery (BAM), and the National Bioenergy Programme into one single platform.
The main goal is to make CBG a major part of India's green energy. This will boost local production, attract private money, support rural business, and cut down gas imports.

The government set mandatory blending targets for City Gas Distribution companies. They must blend 3% CBG in FY 2026-27, 4% in FY 2027-28, and 5% from FY 2028-29 onwards.
To help plant owners earn steady money, the government fixed the CBG price at ₹2,110 per MMBTU for the next ten years.
New and expanding projects can get financial help up to ₹2 crore per Ton Per Day (TPD) of capacity. This money also supports collecting raw materials and processing manure.
The scheme funds new pipelines to connect local biogas plants directly with city gas networks and the national grid.
A special credit guarantee system will help small businesses, cooperatives, and rural entrepreneurs get bank loans with lower risks.
A dedicated fund will help districts map their waste resources, support new technologies, train workers, and improve organic manure quality.

Producing more local biogas will reduce expensive LNG imports. This saves valuable foreign exchange and makes India more self-reliant in energy.
Farmers can earn extra money by selling crop waste and cow dung. This also stops them from burning crop residue and helps produce rich organic fertilizer.